Filmmaker Charlene Gilbert's parents were among the few in her family to leave the South. Charlene's memories of "red dirt and clay" fueled her feelings of dislocation and loss and her desire to document how farmers like her grandfather fought to maintain farms despite tremendous obstacles and assaults. Charlene spent six months in Montezuma, Georgia recording how the latest generation of her family continues that struggle.
I began HOMECOMING the day I discovered that my uncle was about to lose his life's work and land. This particular moment coincided with my discovery that thousands of African-American southern rural communities were under siege and struggling against a systematic effort to remove black farmers from their land and their livelihood. HOMECOMING began as an historical investigation and evolved into a personal journey. On that journey I discovered the power of community, family and tradition. HOMECOMING is as much about hope in the future as it is about loss in the past. For all of us who have never toiled in 100-degree sun with our 6-year-old child at our knees, the South can sometimes be a romanticized dream of family, or a nightmare of burned bodies hanging from trees. What I discovered in the telling of this history was the importance of the land to those who continue to work it and in working it honor those who spilled their blood to escape it.
I shot this film in Montezuma, Georgia on the land that held up the world for the young, "smart Negro" children of the 50s and 60s who dreamt of lives off the farm, who dreamt of labor free of sweat, and who dreamt of giving their sons and daughters a world of choices beyond 40 acres and a mule. As the granddaughter of a farmer who offered up his land so that his daughter might discover new dreams beyond the ones that ended in rows of cotton and so that his granddaughter might never know the smell of exhaustion, for him, Fred H. Mathis Sr., I offer this history, this story of land, love and loss.
Charlene Gilbert
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