After Sherman / Film School Radio interview with Director Jon-Sesrie Goff

Beautifully layered and expressionistic, AFTER SHERMAN is a story about inheritance and the tension that defines our collective American history, especially Black history. Director Jon Sesrie Goff follows his father, a minister, in the aftermath of a mass shooting at his church in Charleston, South Carolina to understand how communities of descendants of enslaved Africans use their unique faith as a form of survival as they continue to fight for America to live up to its many unfulfilled promises to Black Americans. Goff’s feature documentary debut, lays out intimate accounts of the lives of the Black community in the filmmaker's Black Belt hometown, on land that has been in his family for 150 years, where they were once enslaved. Now transformed, primarily on the backs and resourcefulness of Black people, and thriving as a wedding destination, it stands as a reminder of the painful, cross-generational consequences of racism, and a validation of life's beauty. Pure cinematic poetry informed by a history still to be conclusively reckoned with, AFTER SHERMAN foregrounds the Southern Black experience while posing complicated questions about home and ownership that it isn't so presumptuous to believe it can readily answer. Director Jon Sesrie Goff joins us for a conversation on the many ways that our country’s hidden history, bigoted culture, blinding greed, deceitful religious leadership and cynically racist political system has failed an astonishingly resilient people. For news and updates go to: aftersherman.com