Bright Leaves

A brilliant and original new film from renowned documentarian Ross McElwee (Shermans' March).



North Carolina produces more tobacco than any other state in America. This film describes a journey taken across the social, economic, and psychological tobacco terrain of North Carolina by a native Carolinian whose great-grandfather created the famous brand of tobacco known as "Bull Durham." BRIGHT LEAVES is a subjective, autobiographical meditation on the allure of cigarettes and their troubling legacy for the state of North Carolina. It's about loss and preservation, addiction and denial. And it's about filmmaking - home movie, documentary, and fiction filmmaking - as the filmmaker fences with the legacy of an obscure Hollywood melodrama that is purportedly based on his great-grandfather's life. BRIGHT LEAVES explores the notion of legacy - what one generation passes down to the next - and how this can be a particularly complicated topic when the legacy under discussion is a Southern one and is tied to tobacco.



Director's statement: "BRIGHT LEAVES describes a journey taken across the social, economic, and psychological tobacco terrain of North Carolina by a native Carolinian whose great-grandfather created the famous brand of tobacco known as "Bull Durham." BRIGHT LEAVES is a subjective, autobiographical meditation on the allure of cigarettes and their troubling legacy for state of North Carolina. It's about loss and preservation, addiction and denial. And it's about filmmaking - home movie, documentary, and fiction filmmaking - as the filmmaker fences with the legacy of an obscure Hollywood melodrama [Bright Leaf, the 1950 film set in 1894's tobacco-ruled South, starring Gary Cooper and Lauren Bacall and directed by Michael Curtiz (Casablanca)] that is purportedly based on his great-grandfather's life."



"BRIGHT LEAVES leaves you feeling invigorated by the boundless curiosity, humor and high spirits of its creator." ~ Stephen Holden, The New York Times.



"If Ross McElwee were a novelist instead of a creative-nonfiction documentarian, he'd have awards by the mantelful, he'd be an Oprah's Book Club millionaire, he'd be beloved by-at least-the 47 percent of Americans who reportedly read literature of any stripe. His sympathetic, cogent, witty voice would make seductive reading, satisfying a contemplative intercourse we've long since learned not to associate with movies. In a less supercool, more thoughtful world, McElwee's new film would be an event, to be sighed over by reasonable adults, and imitated by ambitious camcorderists. Continuing the autobiographical torrent begun nearly 30 years ago, BRIGHT LEAVES is an utterly mundane miracle, a sampling of gentle insight and poetic retrospection quietly at odds with the exploitative culture around it." ~ Michael Atkinson, The Village Voice.