DON GONYEA, HOST:
Picture a scene from "Gone With the Wind" - plantation homes, oak trees draped in Spanish moss, even women donning bulky hoop skirts and lace-trimmed dresses. But this is not Civil War-era Clayton County. This is present-day Natchez, Mississippi.
Before the Civil War, Natchez was the home of one of the largest slave markets in the country. Today, it's a popular antebellum tourist destination. But what does it mean to live in a place where the past is always present? The new documentary "Natchez" tries to answer that question.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "NATCHEZ")
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: There are only 14,000 people here, so it's a small town. But it's got a very old, rich, deep, peculiar - and I do mean peculiar - history.
GONYEA: And the "Natchez" filmmakers, Suzannah Herbert and Darcy McKinnon, join us now. Thanks to both of you for being with us.
SUZANNAH HERBERT: Thanks for having us.
DARCY MCKINNON: Thank you so much.
GONYEA: So let's start with one of the places that you really, really dive into - the Garden Club. It's a cultural institution in Natchez. It has political influence, and - this is important - it exercises a lot of control over the local tourism industry. It is also relevant to note that it is predominantly a white organization. So tell us more about the club's backstory.
MCKINNON: The Garden Clubs are now as much of a cultural institution as a business institution, and they represent a group of homeowners that also coordinate tours and tourism. So they're independent homeowners, inviting people into their private homes through a loose network of kind of providing an ease for tourists to come into those homes.
GONYEA: These are called pilgrimage tours. Just that name alone is pretty evocative.
MCKINNON: Yeah, the season is called pilgrimage. It's several weekends in the spring and a few in the fall when this collective group of homeowners open the doors of their homes for tours, teas, dinners, events. And they all center around a kind of sense of the Old South and a historical reenactment flair. And for this past 100 years, 90-something-percent of the income into Natchez is coming from this tourism. It's a huge part of the economy of Natchez.
GONYEA: There are telling moments throughout your documentary that really capture a particular vision of history that's being told on the Garden Club's house tours.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "NATCHEZ")
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: That's the tea closet. At the time, it would have been locked because, y'all, tea and sugar were so expensive during that time that you couldn't afford for even a little bit of it to get pilfered by the servants.
GONYEA: Suzannah, how would you describe the pictures these tours paint of Natchez?
HERBERT: I think in a lot of the antebellum homes, enslaved people are called servants or not even mentioned at all, and that really contributes to the erasure of the experience of the enslaved but also the wealth that was built on their backs and stolen. It does a great disservice to the history and also to our society today in terms of, like, not recognizing the legacies of slavery in this country.
GONYEA: So there are other tours that are available in the town. You introduce us to Pastor Tracy Collins. He's known as Rev in the film. And he focuses on the history of slavery, a topic that is rarely present in the Garden Club version.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "NATCHEZ")
TRACY COLLINS: The total number is 750,000. That's three-quarters of a million human beings, men and women, boys and girls, who were bought and sold at this very site, on their way to serve out labor until they die.
GONYEA: Tell us more about what he highlights as he drives people around town in his white van.
HERBERT: He takes people on an hour-and-a-half to two-hour tour. You know, he starts out with a really broad, comprehensive look at the history of Natchez and, you know, makes people feel comfortable with jokes and humor. And he really, you know, approaches people with a lot of grace and allows people to feel comfortable. And then he slowly starts to peel back the layers of history and reveal some of the darker truths of our past. We mirrored Rev's approach with how we approach the film. You know, it starts out - you kind of get overwhelmed by the fantasy and the beauty, and then we slowly start to peel back those layers.
MCKINNON: And I just want to say a little bit about the style of the film, too. I think what I'm so proud of with this film is that this is not a kind of talking heads and archive documentary, even though we're delving into the past. We really were interested with this film and how history is being told and sold today. And the film is set up in a pretty verite mode, and you meet characters in their daily life as you travel around town with Rev and inside the houses.
GONYEA: You also feature a local resident. His name is David Garner. He leads tours of historic Choctaw Hall, where he lives. He starts out as an eccentric but sympathetic character. And then we hear him say things that are - there's just no other way to put it - that are racist. And I wonder how you decide to show both sides of him like that.
HERBERT: It was very important to - one, for everyone in the film - to show people's humanity and also their - that people contain multitudes, right? And for David in particular, it was also a part of my responsibility as a filmmaker to show what I captured privately with him and also publicly with him on tour.
MCKINNON: Yeah, I think part of the conversation we're having when we show David is seeing how his language and the language he uses - which I would define as harmful to communities - works its way in to the fantasy narrative. And so we learn in the film how he's perceived in the community, even as we see him using this language. And I think it asks a broader question of who feels comfortable being allowed in when what is underneath the Southern politeness is actually very harmful.
GONYEA: You show these two different versions of history existing side by side in this town, and each one feels true to the people who claim it. How do you sort that out as filmmakers? Is it merely a matter of presenting the two sides in juxtaposition?
HERBERT: I wanted to do exactly that. I wanted to allow people to speak for themselves and so then audience members could take away how they felt about it without being told. I didn't want the film to be didactic, and I wanted instead for it to probe a lot of questions within people, allow people to have some introspection, especially white Americans.
MCKINNON: I think also there are some - certainly some shocking and concerning moments, and there are two narratives, but I think there are lots of moments in the film where we're watching townspeople and members of the same community really navigate the gulfs between them and really talk through how their different narratives can be brought together. And we see a lot of examples in the film of people trying to figure out their relationship to this hard history. And I think that is really a big lesson to take from the film, too, is that changing your mind is really difficult but necessary.
GONYEA: That's Darcy McKinnon and Suzannah Herbert. "Natchez" comes out this week. Thank you both.
HERBERT: Thank you.
MCKINNON: Thank you so much.
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