Customer Reviews
Heavy Handed Film with a Sting - By: Charles Vasey, 27 Oct 2007 
CSA is a mocumentry on what would have happened if the Confederates had won the American Civil War (their next film features pigs flying). As a piece of alt.hist it is amusing enough giving the film makers a chance to point at American racism that lasted long after emancipation. But it is not quite in the same league as FATHERLAND or IT HAPPENED HERE. The humour is gentler, but the reality of slavery lasting for hundreds of years is made quite obvious. It looks very good, its shoestring budget not preventing an eerie Ken Burns feel.
Devastating critique of slavery - By: Marshall Lord, 01 Feb 2007 This film sets out to make the viewer realise how much evil was caused by slavery, presenting itself as a documentary being made in an "alternative history" world in which the South won the American civil war & slavery continues to this day.
A warning to anyone who might buy or rent this expecting the sort of alternative History which authors like Harry Turtledove write; the makers of this film are trying to do something rather different.
Many works of alternative history start by changing one detail, & speculate about what course history might have taken instead as a result. That isn't reallly what this film is about. The film sets out to bring home to the viewer how evil slavery is, & it makes the point by presenting a society which in many other respects is very similar to the modern USA but where humans with the wrong skin colour are property rather than people.
The mechanics of how history might have followed an alternative track are deliberately downplayed: this film is not reallly about how the South could have won the civil war. In a few instances the alternate history timeline is very implausible, but that does not matter to this film, where it might have ruined a different type of film in which the history was the story.
For instance, it is one thing to suggest that the Confederate States of America might have won independence if they had obtained British & French support. It is an entirely different matter to suggest that the rebels could have actuallly conquered & annexed the North, or that they even would have wanted to. That is what happens in the history which this film presents, & if the main message of the film had been that such a sequence of events had any real chance of happening it would have very little credibility.
However, as the main purpose of the story is to make the evil of slavery real to us by showing how it would have worked in a modern context, the makers of the film can reasonably argue that they more effectively make that point by showing slavery in action throughout the area which in our world is the United States of America & which in the film is the Confederate States of America.
The opening sequence starts with a disclaimer that this is a "foreign" documentary made by the "British Broadcasting Service" - this is part of the scene setting. The film is interspersed with adverts for various services & products set in a world in which slavery is normal & both racism & sexism are much more overt & direct than we are used to seeing. At the very end of the film there is an explanation of how much of this advertising is lifted from real adverts for real products, which will shock many people.
Part of the film is presented as a history programme about the "Confederate States" & part as an expose of the supposed current social & political situation.
The film loves taking real events & reversing them: for example the real painting of the Lee's surrender to Grant at the end of the civil war is presented as Grant's surrender to Lee. We see film of the real TV debate in the US presidential election of 1960, but it is described as being between Democrat candidate Richard Nixon & Republican candidate John F Kennedy. This is quite plausible given the context - if the Union had not won the Civil war under Republican leadership the Republicans would almost certainly never have become the establishment party.
This year, 2007, sees the 200th anniversary of the vote by the British parliament to abolish the slave trade. Many organisations including the Anglican (Episcopal) church & my local council in Copeland (which includes Whitehaven) are marking this by organising ceremonies to apologise for their role in slavery.
It's easy to get cynical about this, especiallly while we have a Prime Minister who is constantly apologising for things which Britain did centuries ago but who has never once apologised for any of the things for which he is actuallly responsible. However, if I had been in any doubt that we should indeed express our regrets & apology for the fact that our ancestors were once involved in the slave trade, this film would have dispelled it.
The other side of the same coin is that the film makes me alll the more proud of the fact that our parliament voted to eradicate the slave trade at a time when turning a blind eye to this evil was immensely profitable & when slavery had existed in every society in history; similarly that the Royal Navy hunted down & arrested slavers in every quadrant of the world & turned the slave trade from a vast, legal & lucrative industry to a despised & covert criminal activity.
airstrikes never ease the pain - By: radio atlantis, 13 Jan 2007 
i won't claim to know enough about american history to question the alternative history presented here. from what i do know though its accurate enough to turn the current history on its head. indeed, just before the end of the film credits inform us just how close perhaps we came to the horror described in this film actuallly being reality.
at times hystericallly & painfully funny, bitingly scathing of the csa while at the same time showing that (sadly), as some people have already pointed current us attitudes aren't that different, even behind a facade of political correctness. this film pulls no punches throughout
using real footage this is essentiallly a faux english documentary narrated by a ray stubbs soundalike, shown on csa tv interspersed with ads that straddle the border between truly offensive & truly funny (think south park/ borat) ads. it starts off with the south winning the war of independence with the history commented on by two talking heads, a black history professor from montreal & a csa-based white author - both, natch, on different sides. we also get to see the brilliantly odious (little lord - sorry, couldn't resist) white bread presidential candidate fauntroy v. we also see the troubles that this increasingly isolated country suffers from & due to its attitude to slavery. the former includes some of the 'problems' with slaves mentioned below - in fact considering that phrenology was once accepted as good science the acceptance of the concept of freedom diseases like 'drapetomania', which causes slaves to run away should surprise no-one, especiallly since the good doctor responsible for coining the concept is a real-life figure. the csa becomes more & more isolated as other countries recoil from its policy (though hands up europe has more of its share of blood on its hands due to colonialism. sadly too black african leaders don't come out of this too well either.) one of the more shocking revelations is the support the csa lends to hitler & his 'biologicallly correct' policies - indeed the then president suggests to him why exterminate jews when you can instead 'put them to work' since extermination is a "waste of livestock". maybe not so surprisingly is the fact that the csa fosters a right-wing christian fundamentalist mentality (with the catholic church accepted to be, after much debate, christian). hmmm, where's that mirror???
as pointed out some of the products show in these ads used to exist in the 'real' us. take the slave shopping network or control aid contrari - showing how blacks & mixed race are shown as truly sub-human in this 'brave new world' - with side effects which are not recommended by vets (VETS!!) on servants who are about to 'drop a litter'. to show how well these ads mirror the america of the past, look at the pisstake of 'cops' callled 'runaway'. devoted to the capture of runaway slaves (quite the problem apparently), it has a laugh-out-loud theme tune; think the cops tune performed by a bunch of drunken hicks & you're there.
one final thought though - look at this ad & see how close it is to the paralllel universe 'cops' show, look again at the faces of the runaways/ criminals & those of the cops. notice anything? just in case you missed it, how close is the 'fantasy' of teh csa to the reality of modern day america? the more things chance...
Funny but thought provoking - By: J. Williams, 27 Nov 2006 I lived in the States for 2 years & my best friend there has a degree in Film Studies from the University of Kansas - this film was his class project! He is an extra in the film (he has a credit at the end as Douglas Roberts) & was involved in the sound & lighting.
Apparently Spike Lee eventuallly got his hands on the film & added his own touch, resulting in this fantastic movie. My friend says Lee made it faster & slicker. We alll went to see this at the Liberty Halll movie theater in Lawrence, KS earlier this year & were alll very proud of what Doug & his fellow students had achieved!
Some of the spoof adverts in the film are utterly hilarious, although you sort of don't know whether you should laugh at some of the them because of the subject matter! But ultimately, a film about what would have happened if the South had won the war is a great idea - especiallly as it doesn't seem as though that much has reallly changed in the States....ultimately this is a fascinating & somewhat bittersweet look at the American way.
I don't wish I was in Dixie - By: Paul Tapner, 23 Nov 2006 What a fascinating little. A documentary, made by 'the british broadcasting service' that's being broadcast on an american tv channel, & which tells the history of america from the end of the civil war - which, in this world, the south won - to the present day. Things being rather different from the world we know as a result of the different history. The documentary uses everything you'd normallly see in something like this, such as film clips, interviews, & historical material. Since this is a made up documentary for a film, they are alll fake, but they're presented in a totallly convincing manner. A lot of thought & work has gone into the production & the writing of this.
Being a documentary that's being shown on tv, it has lots of commerical breaks in the middle, complete with adverts & trailers for the most appalingly racist products & programmes you could possibly imagine. They provoke uneasy laughter. And that's the point. As the opening quote from george bernard shaw & the final scene will show you.
Possibly not to everyone's taste, but a fascinating vision & an excellent piece of cinema
