Sherman's March (Ross McElwee, 1986) | new 4K restoration

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Sherman’s March
(Ross McElwee, 1986, 158 min, USA, DCP)

-- Introduced by photographer, filmmaker, and folklorist, Prof. Tom Rankin (Art, Art History & Visual Studies; Director, MFA|EDA)

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 available in a new 4K restoration - just in time for its 40th anniversary.

• World Premiere – Berlin International Film Festival, 1986
• Grand Jury Prize, US Premiere — Sundance Film Festival, 1987
• Best Documentary — Kansas City Film Critics Circle, 1987
• Special Jury Award — USA Film Festival, Dallas, 1987
• National Society of Film Critics Award — 1987
• U.S. National Film Registry, Library of Congress — 2000
• “One of the Top 20 Documentaries of All Time” — International Documentary Association
• Cinéma du Réel Retrospective — Centre Pompidou, Paris

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Screen/Society screenings are free and open to the public.

Parking Info:  
https://artscenter.duke.edu/parking