C.S.A: THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA
Year: 2004
USA: IFC Films
UK: Tartan Films
Cast: Evamarii Johnson, Rupert Pate, Larry Peterson, Charles Frank (narrator), Sean Blake, Fernando Arenas, Richard A Buswell, Ryan L Carroll, Rodney Hill, Troy Moore, Jon Niccum, Wendy Thompson, Robert Sokol
Director: Kevin Willmott
Country: USA
USA & UK: 89 mins
UK Certificate: 12A contains racist references
USA Release Date: 10 March 2006 (Limited Release - wider)
USA Release Date: 15 February 2006 (Limited Release - New York)
UK Release Date: 4 August 2006 (Limited Release - London, West End)
Synopsis
C.S.A: THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA is a faux documentary that is as unsettling as it is funny. It takes a skewered look at an America that might have been, where the South won the Civil War. Chillingly, the America of C.S.A. is strangely parallel to the one we know today. Supposedly produced by a British broadcasting company, the feature film is presented as a production being shown, controversially, for the first time on television in the States.
Beginning with the British and French forces joining the battle with the Confederacy, thus assuring the defeat of the North at Gettysburg and ensuing battles, the South takes the battle northward and form one country out of the two.
Lincoln attempts escape to Canada but is captured in blackface.
Through the use of other fabricated movie segments, old government information films, television commercials, news breaks, along with actual stock footage from our own history, a provocative and humorous story is told of a country which, in many ways, frighteningly offers a view of a world which Bush would like to reinvent.
After victory, President Davis brings slavery back to the northern states by offering a tax rebate to businesses and households who will buy and own them.
Liberals move to Canada. The nation chooses an expansionist policy and conquers Cuba, Mexico and South America. As world war looms, the C.S.A. takes a non-aggressive stance toward the Third Reich and their move toward racial purity (although not condoning their wasting of possible slave stock by the Final Solution) and makes a pre-emptive strike on Japan on 7 December 1941.
Kennedy is assassinated soon after being elected as it appears he will not only emancipate but also give women the vote. A growing black terrorist base stems from Canada and a Cold War breaks out...complete with the Cotton Curtain being built between the two countries.
Through it all, including a contemporary run for the presidency, we follow a political dynasty, the Fauntroy family, who lead the country through its triumphs and tragedies.
We arrive to a today that, in many ways, we recognize. Although a nation that is content and prosperous, there is a tremendous divide within and suspicious eye without. Current politicians refer to America as two countries and perhaps, other than geographically, there is no difference between Red and Blue or North and South states. We have always struggled with the idea of whether America is the United or Confederate States of America.
