Transcript

MAP WITH HISTORICAL NARRATION; VOICE-OVER (VO):
In 1864, during the American Civil War, Union general William T. Sherman began his famous "March to the sea". With an army of 60,000 men, he swept into the South destroying Atlanta, Georgia, Columbia, South Carolina, and dozens of smaller towns. His troops plundered homes, destroyed livestock, burned buildings, and left a path of destruction 60 miles wide and 700 miles long before finally forcing a Confederate surrender in North Carolina. Sherman's military campaign marked the first time in modern history that total warfare had been waged on a primarily civilian population, and traces of the scars he left on the South can still be found.


ROSS McELWEE; VO:
«Do you want to do it once more?»
HISTORICAL NARRATOR:
«Do it again. Yes.»

FILMMAKER PACING IN EMPTY ROOM; VO:
Two years ago, I was about to shoot a documentary film on the lingering effects of Sherman's March on the South. I'm from the South and all through my boyhood I heard stories about how Sherman had devastated the South. My aunt even keeps a sofa in her attic which is punctured by sword holes put there by Sherman's soldiers as they searched for hidden valuables.

She says she'll never allow the holes to be sewn up. Anyway, I'd gotten a grant to make my film and I stopped off in New York from Boston where I live to stay for a few days with the woman I'd be seeing. But when I arrived, she told me she'd just decided to go back to her former boyfriend. We argued and then I left and went to stay alone in a friend's studio loft, which happened to be vacant at the time.

Finally, I headed South to see my family, and to try to begin my film. (...)

Excerto inicial do filme SHERMAN'S MARCH: A MEDITATION ON THE POSSIBILITY OF ROMANTIC LOVE IN THE SOUTH DURING AN ERA OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROLIFERATION, de Ross McElwee, 1985.