POV, America’s longest running non-fiction series, opens its 36th season with After Sherman, a gripping film about inheritance, landscape identity and tensions within Black Belt communities that define America’s collective history. The film marks director Jon-Sesie Goff’s (Out in the Night) feature debut, and is produced by Goff, blair dorosh-walther, and Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich. In After Sherman Goff returns to the coastal South Carolina land that his family purchased after emancipation. His desire to explore his Gullah Geechee roots leads to a poetic investigation of Black inheritance, trauma, and generational wisdom.
In After Sherman, filmmaker Jon-Sesrie Goff visits his ancestral hometown Georgetown, South Carolina, a community deeply rooted in Gullah Geechee customs to investigate the cultural and spiritual rituals that bind people together in that region. Through talks with family, friends, and neighbors, and watching archival home videos, Goff comprises intimate accounts of the lives of the Black community to showcase the history of the African people on the land.
The film also delves into his relationship with his father, Rev. Dr. Norvel Goff, Sr. to learn about his personal connection to land that has been in his family for 150 years, where they were once enslaved. Dr. Goff, a survivor of the tragic shooting at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C. on June 17, 2015, served as Mother Emanuel’s interim pastor following the killing of the church’s pastor, Reverend Clementa C. Pinckney.
Jon-Sesrie Goff’s After Sherman is ultimately a film about being present in a corner of the American South that is often forgotten except in moments of violence. The film speaks to intergenerational questions between the post-civil rights and civil rights generations. Rather than depicting Black subjects as at the whim of violent forces, Goff documents the imparting of wisdom between generations of African Americans on how to survive not just materially, but spiritually.
“I’m excited for the opportunity to share this film with public television audiences,” said Jon-Sesrie Goff. “As development and tourism seek to reimagine the landscape of the coastal south, it’s increasingly important to highlight the efforts many have undertaken in the preservation of Gullah Geechee culture and the protection of black owned land, many of the properties purchased by the formerly enslaved. Working with my collaborators, we handcrafted something that we hope honors the spirit of community and reflects the richness of the region. It was important for us to make visible a living history, where all the complexities of the past and present inform our understanding of home.”
“After Sherman, Jon-Sesrie Goff’s personal story about belonging, is an arresting film to open POV’s 36th season,” said Erika Dilday, Executive Director, American Documentary and Executive Producer, POV and America ReFramed. “Every year American Documentary renews its commitment to provide seasoned and emerging filmmakers the opportunity to share their stories via public media’s national platform. In return, we ask our filmmakers to be fearless; to go to difficult places, and ask difficult questions to deliver to audiences the truths that inform us, enlighten us, and hopefully lead us toward real change.”
After Sherman, a co-production with ITVS, Black Public Media, and Hedera Pictures, LLC, makes its national broadcast premiere on POV Monday, June 26, 2023 at 10pmET/9C (check local listings) and will be available to stream free until July 26, 2023 at pbs.org, and the PBS App.
