Gateway Cinephiles

3-Minute Intro: C.S.A. - The Confederate States of America

Screened: November 26, 2007
Format: DVD - IFC (2006)
Selected by: Becky

“The Civil War was about states’ rights, not slavery.” This simple, persistent bit of racist apologetics is the thorn provoking Kevin Willmott’s independently produced 2004 mockumetary C.S.A: The Confederate States of America. The film’s hook is straightforward and provocative: What if the South had won the Civil War? Staged as a censored British documentary examining American history since the Confederacy’s victory at Gettysburg, C.S.A. is a dark satire with wicked ambitions. Specifically, Willmott aspires for his audience—black and white alike—to chuckle nervously, squirm with discomfort, and think honestly about America’s past and future.

Exhibiting a studied eye for documentary filmmaking tropes, but leaving aside the somber tone, Willmott uses photographs and film footage—much of it staged or digitally doctored—to create an artificial 140-year history where Abraham Lincoln was a fugitive and America was a Nazi ally during World War II. C.S.A. could fit into the weeknight schedule of some parallel universe History Channel, right down to the commercials featuring racist caricatures. Canadian black abolitionists provide the outsider’s perspective on the racist American empire that has swallowed up the Western hemisphere and used slavery as a solution to or distraction from every national crisis.

Some detractors have nitpicked C.S.A.’s humor as awkward and its alternate history as woefully far-fetched, but such critiques seem misplaced given Willmott’s resources, aptitudes, and intentions. Shot in sections over the course of three years on a shoestring budget, C.S.A. has been described by Willmott not as a “What If” thought experiment, but a “What Is” salvo, a so-scary-it’s-funny rumination on where we came from and where we are headed. For all its sensational twists, the history depicted in C.S.A. bears an uncanny, even improbable, similarity to that of our world. Despite this contrivance, budget production values, and some sketchy digital effects, Willmott has crafted a work of grim historical revisionism, a film that throttles America’s collective amnesia over our roots. After all, if the racism that motivated American slavery has been purged from modern society, C.S.A. should be a frivolous science fiction distraction, as amusing as an Earth ruled by dinosaurs. If C.S.A. prompts uneasiness in us, how far from the mark can it really be?