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THE WALKER PERCY PROJECT
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JAMES AGEE FILM PROJECT
Ross Spears
As America began to confront the injustices of Jim Crow, a new generation of literary voices rose up from below the Mason-Dixon Line — voices that spoke not just to the soul of the South but to that of the nation. This program examines Southern American literature from the early 1960s to today's literary landscape. It highlights the work of Walker Percy, Alice Walker, William Styron, Ernest Gaines, Reynolds Price, Alex Haley, Margaret Walker, Lee Smith, Larry Brown, Clyde Edgerton, Pat Conroy, and others. Interviews with many of these authors, including Alice Walker and William Styron, are also featured.
Dramatized readings help to illuminate passages from Percy's The Moviegoer, Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Lee Smith's Fair and Tender Ladies. The film is a part of the series Voices in Black and White: The History of Modern Southern Literature, funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Southern Literature Documentary, 1963-1999
James Agee Film Project was founded in 1974 by filmmaker Ross Spears, who was involved at the time in producing a documentary on the life of Tennessee author James Agee (1909-1955). The company's documentary productions have included The Electric Valley (on the Tennessee Valley Authority), Tell Me About the South, and Appalachia: A History of Mountains and People.
Release Date: 1999
TRT: 70 minutes