MELTDOWN IN DIXIE
Directed by Emily Harrold
Produced by Emily Harrold, Seth Gadsden
USA, 2021
40 min
In the wake of the 2015 Charleston Massacre, a battle erupts in Orangeburg, South Carolina between the Sons of Confederate Veterans and an ice cream shop owner forced to fly the Confederate flag in his parking lot. The film explores the broader role of Confederate symbolism in the 21st century and the lingering racial oppression which symbols such as this help maintain.
What if your business was forced to fly a flag that was in direct conflict with your beliefs? Confederacy runs deep in the South and the lingering racial oppression those symbols support is explored in this documentary. Three carefully chosen stories take you on one city's journey and challenges to find harmony amongst its people. America today is struggling to empathize with others points of views or the very definition of what one historic movement meant to a sector of our population. How will we ever come together if we can’t examine and better understand our painful past? Answers may not come today but this documentary is a closer examination and in my opinion one step in the right direction to getting us there.
— Elle Shaw, Programmer