- Welcome to Independent Lens.
I'm Pete Schwaba, host of PBS Wisconsin's Director's Cut.
Tonight, we bring you a film
one critic calls a mesmerizing nightmare.
Natchez is a city in the state of Mississippi
on the Mississippi River with a population of 14,000 people
that has an unreconciled past
regarding the Civil War and slavery.
Tonight's film is appropriately titled Natchez.
The people of Natchez, Mississippi
have always been divided
over the city's controversial history.
The days of slavery may be in the past,
but the town's residents are divided over the fact
that the city still profits from its racist history.
In Natchez, tourists can explore plantation mansions
and pay to do so.
These tours are big business,
and the city's economy has come to rely on the money.
Those who give the tours lean into the plantation days,
celebrating the ostentatious glamour that accompanied,
but cannot erase the fact
that the same people that lived in these estates
owned other human beings like property.
Director Suzannah Herbert was inspired to make this film
after attending a wedding on a plantation in the town in 2017.
She was surprised and intrigued
with the town's antebellum history and plantation tourism.
She struggled with the idea that such a joyous occasion
took place in a setting
so synonymous with pain and suffering.
In the film, Herbert explains
that most of the visitors are middle-class whites
who are called pilgrims, and the tours are called pilgrimages.
Shocking the director even more
were that the tour guides were dressed
in plantation owner attire,
seemingly clueless to the racist undertones of the wardrobe.
Either way, Herbert felt this was something to be explored,
so she set out to understand the disconnect.
She found the pilgrimages intriguing
in that she wondered if tourists knew they were hearing
a very narrow or one-sided rendition of history,
and if it bothered them.
With this documentary,
she wanted to give an equal voice to voices unheard.
The award-winning Herbert's directing process
goes well beyond just pointing the camera and shooting.
Herbert spent 75 days in and around Natchez,
immersing herself in the community
to help her fully understand sensibilities.
She said getting to know people
helped her get their stories on camera without much hesitation
because she had become a familiar face.
In the case of the homeowners,
they were used to giving tours and talking,
so they really opened up once the cameras started rolling.
This is her second feature-length documentary,
and she's doing something right, as Natchez won best documentary
at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York,
and took home the same prize
at the Palm Springs and Hamptons International Film Festivals.
At one point in the film, the town's mayor declares,
"I appreciate and love all our history, even the bad,"
adding that he wants everyone to come together in love.
This kind of contradictory statement
is exactly why Suzannah Herbert had to make this movie.
Enjoy Natchez.
It starts now on PBS Wisconsin, your home for independent film.