South

Chantal Akerman

Starting with the lynching of a black by three whites, South depicts a Texas nostalgic for its slave-holding past. Alternating static shots and dolly shots, Chantal Akerman reconstitutes the horrible incident that occurred in June 1998 in Jasper: a black man was chained to a pick-up truck and dragged several miles down the road by three young whites. “We found pieces of his body all along the road”, says a witness. The victim was a musician, the criminals members of an extreme rightwing group. In Jasper, the Blacks prefer remembering the terrible past rather than rebelling against this crime, as if memories from the period of slavery and lynchings had the power to attenuate violence today.