A FEW WORDS ABOUT WORDS
“ If you are silent about your pain , they ’ ll kill you and say you enjoyed it .”
- Zora Neale Hurston
MOVIE REVIEW
BY MCKENZIE CURTIS
When Barack and Michelle Obama launched their television and movie production company in 2018 , the former president and First Lady promised to tell stories that “ help us open our minds and hearts to others .”
With “ Descendant ,” a Netflix documentary they accomplish that – and much more .
The 2022 film chronicles the search for the Clotilda , the last slave ship that arrived in the United States . It secretly brought a cargo of 110 African men , women and children – from what is now Benin – into waters near Mobile , Alabama , more than half a century after the importation of slaves into the United States was outlawed .
“ Descendant ” tells the gripping story of what happened to that ship , the descendants of its human cargo and the Alabama town they built .
The documentary , which was inspired by the 2018 release of Zora Neale Hurston ’ s book “ Barracoon : The Story of the Last Black Cargo ,” is based on her 1928 interview with , Cudjo Lewis , a former slave who was brought to Alabama aboard the Clotilda in 1860 .
The film opens with a camera pan up a green swamp-like body of water where Kamau Sadiki , a master diver , paddles along the Mobile River .
“ It ’ s a spiritual sort of thing being connected to the natural world , the natural environment ,” he says . The Clotilda was a conduit to the past and future , connecting Lewis and other Africans on the ship to their “ descendant community ,” Sadiki offers .
The imagery of water in the film is not only a thematic choice ; it is a tool for moving the narrative forward . The story begins in the water , as does the plight of people of the African diaspora . The wound of racism , the site of the trauma , is in the water . The healing and the rebirth of Africatown , the community built by the former slaves and their descendants begins when the Clotilda is found . The film ’ s strengths lie in the range of interviews from the descendants of those who were brought here on the ship . They are seen expressing the emotional ties of the town ’ s Black families to their past , and the deep-seated pain they continue to bear .
The documentary captures the seamless connection of the current residents of Africatown to the struggles of the Africans who were brought to Mobile shortly before the start of the Civil War .
“ Descendant ” represents “ both a story of pain and extraordinary hardship , but also a story of strength and resilience and overcoming ,” Barack Obama said of the film , when he introduced it last year at the Martha ’ s Vineyard African American Film Festival .
“ Descendant ” trailer – https :// www . netflix . com / title / 81586731
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