Watch C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America For Free

The Age of Commercialism

Load of rubbish!!

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

From start to finish, it's a satire on American history and TV documentaries. The real history is deliberately twisted to show viewers what America might have been like today if the South had won the Civil War. Fake historians recite fake commentaries; fake visuals show action that never occurred or is taken out of context; actors act out characters that never lived. Even the commercial breaks are fictional and presume that slave life is part of America in the twenty-first century.I thought the commercials were funny and clever. Examples include a TV sitcom called "Leave It To Beulah", about a Black maid in a White household. Another commercial advertises "The Shackle", an electronic product put on slaves so that their owners know where they are, at all times. The funniest, though, is "The Slave Shopping Network", where two bubble-headed White ladies advertise Black people for sale; the commercial is funny because it is so outrageous.The history lesson, however, I found boring. Structured like a documentary, its visual images and its various commentaries go on and on in excruciating detail. I'm just not that much of a history buff to spend all that time trying to digest a history that never happened. Further, the viewer really has to know the real history in order to know which characters, scenes, and legacies are bogus, since this false history is a twisted version of real history. In particular, I found the "John Ambrose Fauntroy" character annoying.The film's visuals and sound compare favorably to real documentaries. Background music is appropriate. Casting is generally acceptable, but the narrative suffers from some overacting. The cast is very large, consistent with a long drawn-out historical drama, showing lots of different people from different historical periods.Even though the South lost on the battleground, its values seem to be still embraced by many Americans; that, I think, is the theme of this film. I just wish the satire could have been presented more succinctly and with less confusion. "C.S.A.: The Confederate States Of America" is built on a clever premise. It will be most appreciated by viewers with a thorough knowledge of the real American history.

This is a rather entertaining mockumentary which explores what would have happened had the Confederacy not only won the Civil War but annexed the entire United States and reintroduced slavery to the North, which is still going strong both North and South in the early 21st Century. Now, obviously this completely fails as a believable alternate history but that's fine as it is intended as satire. The premise is that we are watching an extremely controversial documentary about Confederate history made by the British Broadcasting Service.As well as through talking heads, the history of this expanded CSA is illustrated through authentic photographs and newsreel footage and clips from fictional historical films such as D.W. Griffiths' 1915 silent classic "The Hunt for Dishonest Abe" and the 1946 RKO film "The Jefferson Davis Story". In the latter, Davis' slave Popsy is played by a white actor in blackface. As part of the documentary's broadcast on Confederate television, advertisements for various products and businesses with racist names and caricatures, most of which are based directly on actual ones which thankfully no longer exist, are shown. We also see ads for TV series such as "Runaways" (a parody of "Cops") and the kids' show "Uncle Tom and Friends" as well as the Department of Racial Identity, an online slave auction and a new electronic shackle for slaves with a microship to track them down if they run away. All of this makes for uncomfortable viewing but that's good since satire should be uncomfortable for people to watch when it needs to be.On the negative side, the film is paced rather poorly. Even at a relatively short 82 minutes, it's perhaps a tad too long as the joke begins to wear a bit thin and it loses much of its momentum in its second half. Even at its best, it is seldom as intriguing as its premise. It's also a very low budget production which suffers badly from amauterish acting. By and large, I thought that the fake ads worked better than the "actual" documentary as there seemed to have been more thought put into them. The other day, I watched "Curse of the Blair Witch", a 1999 Sci-Fi Channel mockumentary made to promote "The Blair Witch Project", which was far better. The major reason for that was the acting and writing made it seem if it could be real. It looked as if it could have been an episode of "In Search Of...", "Unsolved Mysteries" or a similar program. Even though from the absurd alternate history premise it is far more obvious that this is fake, I feel as if the film could have benefited from the same approach. The basic key to good acting is not to make it look like you're acting and this is too obviously staged.

Heres the thing, it's a really solid premise that's lent itself to numerous books, movies, sci-fi, etc. What if the Confederacy actually turned the tables and won the Civil War? From the viewpoint of a British documentary, the film covers how the altered outcome shaped the economical, cultural, and political development of the nation throughout the 20th century.There are two main issues here. The first is that the film suffers from what appears to be a smaller budget. I can't fault the filmmakers for this one, they did a solid job with what they had. It just becomes obvious at some points that cuts were made in production, so don't expect something too extravagant. At times it almost looks cheesy (not sure if that was the intention).The bigger issue is that it's almost too much to cover in 90 minutes. They try to focus on key points, but some things are completely glossed over and given little/no mention (sports, pop culture, scientific developments). This is definitely a premise that would be better served by a several part miniseries with episodes focused on various aspects of the Confederate culture. Worth a watch though.

CSA begins with a quote from Shaw saying that if you are going to tell the truth, make it funny or people will kill you. CSA certainly tells a lot of truth, but it's more disturbing than funny, a mockumentary so dark and so thoughtful that it winds up being rather depressing.This fake documentary tells the history of a United States in which the Confederate States won the Civil War and slavery continues to this day. The movie plays this as a British documentary shown on American TV and interrupted by American commercials for products with incredibly racist names, references to black people as property and even a public service commercial encouraging people to report those of suspicious racial make up.A lot of research obviously went into this movie. As much as possible it tries to use genuine events and people from that period, and much of the early part of the movie appears to mix in a lot of historical events, sometimes only slightly twisted. At the end of the movie some of the research is shown, just to let people see how close the film is to reality.The movie is less successful when it tries for something more elaborate than a Ken Burns collection of talking heads, pictures and documents. Recreations of movies and plays show clearly how small the budget for this film was. They also can break the mood, most notably in a Broadway musical that seems to be going for cartoonish humor in a movie that for the most part is dark satire.The movie feels, for the most part, very real. The trajectory of history seems reasonable, and many of the commercials are pitch perfect. It can be difficult to watch such a horrible world unfold (it reminded me of times as the depressing, brilliant novel The Handmaid's Tale) but it is a movie well worth watching all the same.