C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America
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| C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America | |
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| Directed by | Kevin Willmott |
| Produced by | Rick Cowan Ollie Hall Sean Blake Victoria Goetz Benjamin Meade Andrew Herwitz Marvin Voth |
| Written by | Kevin Willmott |
| Starring | Rupert Pate Evamarii Johnson Larry Peterson |
| Running time | 89 min. |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America is a 2004 mockumentary directed by Kevin Willmott. It is a fictional account of an alternate history in which the Confederates won the American Civil War.
The movie is presented as if it were a British documentary. A note suggests that censorship came close to preventing its first broadcast in the Confederate States of America (C.S.A.), and that its point of view might not coincide with that of the TV network. C.S.A was released on DVD on August 8, 2006.
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[edit] Plot
C.S.A. is shown as a British-made documentary about American history, disagreeing with American people in many aspects. The two main historians featured are white conservative Sherman Hoyle and black Patricia Johnson. Throughout the film, an American politician, Democratic candidate John Fauntroy V, great-grandchild of one of the people who made the C.S.A. possible, is interviewed. A voice-over narrator is also featured over false images and historical news footage shown out of context, including a false D.W. Griffith movie about how Abraham Lincoln, disguised in blackface, tries to flee to Canada after the Confederacy's military victory with the assistance of Harriet Tubman. Unfortunately, both are captured and Lincoln was imprisoned while Tubman was executed. After serving for two years in prison, Lincoln is pardoned and exiled to Canada, where he dies in June 1905.
In the fictional timeline, Judah P. Benjamin succeeds in bringing the United Kingdom and France to the aid of the Confederacy, thereby causing the Battle of Gettysburg to be a turning point in favor of the South. After the war, the C.S.A. becomes the Western hemisphere superpower, conquering and occupying all of Central America and South America, with a blend of segregation and apartheid. The only non-C.S.A. nation in the Western Hemisphere is Canada, which becomes a home for refugee abolitionists and blacks; the wall constructed to separate the two nations is referred to as the "Cotton Curtain". Hatred of "Red Canada" dates back to the late 19th Century, when Frederick Douglass swayed the Canadian Parliament against deporting escaped slaves. While this enlightened thinking has led to the obvious trade impediment of the wall, Canada reaps the greater reward of becoming the popular culture world power the USA is in the real timeline, with the African-American contributions now feeding Canadian culture, with presumably handsome financial dividends. CSA culture never evolves beyond, in Johnson's words, "government-inspired propaganda", e.g. The Lawrence Welk Show.
The film contains a version of World War II in which the C.S.A. were allies with Nazi Germany, but didn't agree with Hitler's final solution; the C.S.A preferred using other nonwhite races as slaves instead of destroying them, but agreed not to act in any possible war Germany could have. Instead, the C.S.A made a pre-emptive strike against the Empire of Japan on December 7, 1941 as an opening blow in a war against the Asian nation.
C.S.A. includes several advertisement breaks, featuring racist advertisements for products aimed at white families owning black slaves, including an electronic shackle to track runaway slaves, the television show Runaway, Darkie Toothpaste, and the Coon Chicken Inn. The DVD also contains several deleted commercials, like the Confederate States Air Force and the children's show Uncle Tom and Friends. Several of the ads are parodies of ads for real products.
In the final segment, it is revealed why the film was initially banned for broadcast within the C.S.A. The British documentary crew asked Senator John Ambrose Fauntroy V (the Democratic candidate for president in this timeline) to arrange a meeting with slaves from the CSA. The slaves received training before the interview, and to proceed was pointless. However, the crew clandestinely received a note telling them to proceed to a rural Virginia road. The crew is then met by a black man who leads them to Horace, Fauntroy's slave, who tells them that Fauntroy is partly African-American -- that is, partly descended from a slave. The racial allegations cost Fauntroy the election, and a month later, he commits suicide.
The end of the film contains a segment that explains which parts of the proposed alternate timeline are based on actual history; specifically, many of the extremely racist products shown in the faux-"commercial breaks" are indeed real products that were advertised from the turn of the century up until the 1950s.
[edit] Cast and crew
[edit] Main cast
- Sherman Hoyle: Rupert Pate
- Patricia Johnson: Evamarii Johnson
- John Fauntroy V: Larry Peterson
- Narrator: Charles Frank
[edit] Crew
- Director: Kevin Willmott
- Writer: Kevin Willmott
- Producers: Rick Cowan, Ollie Hall, Sean Blake, Victoria Goetz, Benjamin Meade, Andrew Herwitz and Marvin Voth. (The film, after the initial public release, became a Spike Lee production.)
