“One of the best documentaries and one of the best comedies ever made.”
– Patton Oswalt
“Expanded my perception of what a film could be. There are few filmmakers who have as much to say and the courage to say it, and he does it all with humor and grace.”
– Jay Duplass
“A filmmaker-anthropologist with a rare appreciation for the eccentric details of our edgy civilization.”
– Vincent Canby, The New York Times
“Quirky, funny, and fascinating …a comic filmmaker with the rare ability to turn personal obsession into a delightful, rueful, and resonant American odyssey.”
– David Ansen, Newsweek
Armed with a 16mm camera and a grant to make a documentary about the lingering aftermath of William Tecumseh Sherman’s 1864 march to the sea, Ross McElwee gets sidetracked. After his girlfriend breaks up with him, Ross shifts his attention from the historical to the personal, to the battlefield of modern love, and embarks on a sociological chronicle that documents the courting rites and rituals of the New South.
A generous and humanistic portrait of several remarkable women that Ross meets along the way, SHERMAN’S MARCH sketches its characters with novelistic sensitivity: Pat, an aspiring actress with a yen for Burt Reynolds; Claudia, a roller-skating interior designer; Jackie, the activist whose anti-nuclear advocacy dovetails with Ross’s deepest fears; and above all, Charleen Swansea, Ross’s mentor and a one-woman Greek chorus of unsolicited romantic counsel.
A landmark of first-person filmmaking that presaged everything from Michael Moore to reality TV, SHERMAN’S MARCH is now showing in a new 4K restoration.
Director: Ross McElwee (US 1985) 157 min.
Friday-Monday • 6:30
$15 General | $11.25 Seniors & Youth + Matinees | $9.25 CAFILM Members