“You have this type of history, your ancestors are going to always talk to you,” we’re told in a new trailer for Margaret Brown’s “Descendant.” The Netflix doc sees Brown returning to her hometown of Mobile, Alabama to uncover the history of The Clotilda, the last known ship to carry enslaved Africans into the United States after slavery was abolished. A local businessman made a bet that it could be done, then burned the ship to conceal his crime. This story has “slowly been erased, and as far as I can remember, it’s never been in history books,” one character explains.
But “Descendant” isn’t just about The Clotilda. “I don’t want the momentum of the story to just be focused on the ship. it’s not all about that ship,” another character emphasizes. The film also focuses on the descendant community of Africatown, which was once thriving. “By 2019, Africatown is completely surrounded, every direction, by some form of heavy industry,” we’re told. “What person wants to wake up knowing that they’re sitting on historic land but they’ve got to smell the chemicals from a factory?”
“History exists beyond what is written,” Brown told us. “Though the [The Clotilda] was intentionally destroyed upon arrival, its memory and legacy weren’t.”
Asked what she’d like audiences to think about after watching “Descendant,” she shared, “There’s a scene in the film where Anderson Flen, a resident of Africatown who’s been working with fellow community members and preservationists to transform Africatown into a tourist destination that honors the legacy of enslaved Black people, visits the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, often known as the national Lynching Memorial. There’s this moment at the memorial when he says, ‘The real test a lot of times is not in coming. It’s what do you do when you leave?’ That’s the question I want audiences to ask themselves after seeing this film: Now that I’m a witness to this history and to the injustices that persist because of it, how do I actively participate in the story? What is my responsibility, and how do I engage? I think that’s the key,” she emphasized. ” What you do after watching the film is equally, and arguably more important, than what you think about.”
Margaret Brown is a Peabody winner and Emmy nominee. Her other docs include “The Order of the Myths” and “The Great Invisible.”
“Descendant” is currently playing at New York Film Festival and launches on Netflix It won a special jury prize at this year’s edition of Sundance Film Festival.
