THE ODYSSEY

Before setting off across the South to document the lingering impact of Union General William T. Sherman’s merciless “March to the Sea,” director Ross McElwee is dumped. With shaky equilibrium, he returns home to North Carolina to begin his film. Amid family pressures to find a “nice Southern girl,” McElwee begins to film a string of infatuations and short-lived relationships, revealing the patterns and dynamics he has with the women who cross his path (and Sherman’s route). 

Winning the Grand Jury Prize at the 1987 Sundance Film Festival, and selected for preservation by the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 2000, McElwee’s first-person narrative Sherman’s March: A Meditation on the Possibility of Romantic Love In the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation broke the documentary genre wide open with creative interpretation and possibility. 

In this discussion, maverick filmmaker and Sherman’s March fan Boris Mitić (In Praise of Nothing) returns to Galerie with an interactive game centered around the film, posing 12 questions to prompt analysis and reflection into the innovation of McElwee’s personal epic.