Descendant

The latest documentary by Margaret Brown (The Great Invisible, The Order of Myths, Be Here To Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt) introduces the world to the descendants of the survivors from the Clotilda, which is believed to be the last slave ship to bring captives from Africa to the United States. The Clotilda arrived at Mobile Bay, Alabama, sometime between the fall of 1959 and the summer of 1860, decades after Congress had made participation in the Atlantic slave trade illegal back in 1807. The practice continued surreptitiously, of course, and in the case of the Clotilda, a wealthy Southern landowner named Timothy Meaher sponsored the voyage, empowering the ship's captain to purchase the slaves, smuggle them into the US, and then scuttle, burn, and sink the ship upon its return to destroy the evidence.

Several of the 110 men, women, and children who were brought over from Africa on the ship, along with other formerly enslaved folks, founded Africatown, a community in a poor section of Mobile that continued to practice many of their West African traditions and language for decades. In 2018, a reporter claimed to have discovered evidence of the wreck of the Clotilda and soon a team of archaeologists began to investigate. Brown’s film chronicles this investigation and the efforts of the inhabitants of Africatown as they discuss how to memorialize this discovery and how to (and whom would be) best to tell their story.

Brown gives us a rich sense of who the individual descendants of those brought over on the Clotilda are. She introduces us to many and they, in turn, introduce us to their culture and history. But Brown structures much of this documentary as if it were some kind of mystery; building suspense around the discovery of the ship and the initial questions as to its authenticity. However, none of that setup is followed through, which makes the picture seem like it fails at something it shouldn't need to do in the first place. What's most expertly captured is the power and value of the oral tradition, and how the things we say over and over shape our history—in some cases create it, and in some keep it alive. The interactions between descendants of slaves and slavers are fascinating to watch as we learn more about Africatown's more recent history, an all too familiar story about how white wealth segregates black neighbourhoods and sucks them dry of resources. How the story of The Clotilda will be told to future generations, and what the future of Africatown and its residents will be, remain open and thought-provoking questions.