Independent Lens, Natchez
PBS Western Reserve (WNEO 45.1 / WEAO 49.1):
Sunday, May 17, at 11:30 PM
Fusion (WNEO 45.2 / WEAO 49.2):
Monday, May 11, at 10 PM
Saturday, May 16, at noon
From director Suzannah Herbert, a Memphis-born documentary filmmaker, the character-driven NATCHEZ captures an unsettling clash between history and memory in a small Mississippi town reliant on antebellum tourism to survive.
For generations, Natchez, Mississippi, has marketed an idyllic vision of the Old South. Now, the town is reckoning with a romanticized past, an uncertain future, and its responsibility towards the descendants of enslaved people. An exploration of a tourist town at a crossroads, NATCHEZ immerses you in the lives of an array of historic homeowners, activists, and tour guides (whose livelihoods depend on its carefully curated past) caught between preserving tradition and confronting the realities buried beneath it.
What begins as a portrait of a charming Southern tourist destination slowly reveals deeper fault lines. With moments that are tense, darkly humorous, and unexpectedly intimate, Herbert’s film becomes something more unsettling and urgent: a window into the ongoing struggle over who has the right to share America’s story.