BOUND BY BLOOD - Echoes of the Elaine Massacre
ABOUT
ECHOES FROM ELAINE intimately examines how a long enshrouded race massacre still haunts Black and White descendants a century later. While trauma, shame and denial persist in the long shadow of the Elaine Massacre, some descendants are trying to reconcile with the past. Over several days in 1919, to stop efforts to unionize, white posses and federal troops gunned down as many as 200 black sharecroppers, and jailed and tortured many more, including Sheila Walker’s great grand uncles. When Sheila befriends the grandson of a Klansman who took part in the killings, she sets out to Elaine, Arkansas, where the massacre took place, compelled to shine a light on this largely unknown history. ECHOES FROM ELAINE is a reflection of America’s struggle to reckon with its past. Weaved in are director Franziska Blome’s personal reflections as Sheila’s daughter-in-law and also as someone carrying forward a completely different history. Having lived in South Africa during Apartheid, and grown up in Germany, descending from a family that included both Nazis and opponents of Nazism, her perspective is informed by an intimate sense of the power of history, the pain of silence, and the value of reconciliation and reparations.
CREDITS
Llewellyn Smith
Llewellyn Smith