Landmark new documentary reveals history of white supremacy and Black resistance reflected by Richmond’s Confederate monuments
“I think the film is brilliant. I really enjoyed the cast more than any I can remember. In some documentaries there are just a couple of people who really stand out, and others who annoy. These folks were uniformly excellent, adding their own thing to the mix. I found it very moving.” —Annette Gordon-Reed, Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard, and recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for History, the National Book Award for Nonfiction, a National Humanities Medal, and a MacArthur “Genius Grant”
"The film is a national story through the intimate lens of Richmond history. ... It's our obligation to make this more than a moment." —2021 Pulitzer Prize-winner for commentary, Michael Paul Williams, Richmond Times-Dispatch
“A stunning achievement! ‘How the Monuments Came Down’ takes us on a journey from slavery to freedom to the present, unraveling the complex history of race, racism, and resistance in the capital of the Confederacy with pace and purpose. The historical depth and detail is remarkable, making unmistakably clear that the Black Lives Matter movement is a part of a continuum of Black protest which has transformed the South and America. This is the film that we need to make sense of the turbulent and transformative times in which we live.” —Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Professor of History, Ohio State University
“‘How the Monuments Came Down’ needs to be required viewing for all K-12 students in Virginia.” —Niya Bates, Public Historian, former director of the Getting Word African American Oral History Project at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello
Richmond, VA — Field Studio and VPM are excited to announce a major new documentary film, How the Monuments Came Down, revealing Richmond’s history through the lens of its Confederate monuments, set to premiere on the WORLD Channel on September 15th at 7:30pm ET, with an exclusive advance screening hosted by the Smithsonian National Museum of American History on August 31st.
The National Museum of American History will feature a virtual screening and discussion of the film, featuring Tsione Wolde-Michael, Curator of African American Social Justice History at the National Museum of American History; Michael Paul Williams, a journalist for the Richmond Times-Dispatch who won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary; Christy Coleman, a nationally renowned museum professional who led the American Civil War Museum in Richmond for 12 years; and Hannah Ayers and Lance Warren, the film’s directors. (Coleman and Williams are cast members in the film, and Coleman was a story advisor on the project.)
Shortly before the Smithsonian advance screening and the WORLD Channel national broadcast premiere, How the Monuments Came Down will have its festival premiere at the Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival in Vermont. Festival organizers have recently announced that the film will receive the Thaddeus Stevens Award for Social Engagement.
In June, How the Monuments Came Down was presented in a sneak-peek screening in Richmond to a crowd of more than 700 people. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that the evening was characterized by “a mixture of glee and reflection.”
Funded by VPM and the Virginia Film Office and produced by the Emmy-winning directors of Richmond’s Field Studio, How the Monuments Came Down begins with scenes from last summer, when streets shook with protests against systemic racism in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. The filmmakers reveal the deep historical roots of this moment, grounded in the competing traditions of white supremacy and Black resistance in Richmond since the end of the Civil War. A diverse cast of 30 Richmonders — including history-makers, descendants, scholars, and activists — tells this story, supported by a vast visual record of Richmond’s history never before presented in a single work.
Throughout, this epic story of struggles over power and justice is driven by individual narratives with names both familiar and likely new to most viewers: Robert E. Lee, James Apostle Fields, Jubal Early, Maggie Walker, Curtis Holt, Arthur Ashe, Chuck Richardson, and Janine Bell are some of the many people whose lives and work help to illustrate why Confederate monuments came to powerfully shape Richmond’s landscape — and why people demanded they be taken down.
How the Monuments Came Down is the first documentary film about a broad sweep of Richmond’s history. It was directed, produced, and edited by Hannah Ayers and Lance Warren, Emmy-winning filmmakers whose previous works have aired on PBS, toured to screening events in 30 states, and screened in thousands of middle-school, high-school, and university classrooms nationwide.
In 2017, Ayers and Warren premiered An Outrage, about the history and legacy of lynching in the American South, at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. The following year, The Hail-Storm: John Dabney in Virginia, their film about an enormously talented yet largely forgotten African American chef, launched Black History Month programming on VPM. More recently, Ayers and Warren have produced two seasons of the VPM series The Future of America’s Past, a history-on-location show hosted by Edward L. Ayers, the historian and president emeritus of the University of Richmond; and Woke Vote, a documentary short embedded with Black millennial political activists mobilizing African American voters across the South.
How the Monuments Came Down is an ambitious work crafted by an accomplished and mostly local team, with a crew that reflects the story. The core team includes story advisors Christy Coleman, a nationally renowned museum professional who led the American Civil War Museum for 12 years; Julian Hayter, an historian at the University of Richmond and an authority on Richmond’s political history; Enjoli Moon, Founder and Creative Director of Afrikana Film Festival, Co-Founder of The JXN Project, and Assistant Curator of Film at the ICA; and Joseph Rogers, a public historian at the American Civil War Museum, descendant of a key character in the film, and a progressive organizer.
The film is principally a work of history. And yet, through its documentation of last year’s uprising for racial justice, it is also a historical source preserving moments in Richmond’s history that will never be seen again.
The filmmakers captured footage of every Confederate monument removed by the City of Richmond and the transformation of those monuments and their pedestals by residents demanding change. Interviews were filmed during the summer and fall of 2020, when protesters still regularly took to the streets and the sudden shifts on Monument Avenue were fresh in the minds of all who watched, who marched for justice, and, in some cases, who resisted these changes. In this way, How the Monuments Came Down is as much a time capsule as it is a cinematic document of a seismic shift in the history of the South — when the former capital of the Confederacy took down its Confederate monuments.
Animated historical images bring to life 160 years of Richmond’s history. Original music by a composer whose work has driven Oscar-winning and Oscar-nominated films provides the soundtrack. And an Emmy-nominated cinematography team presents visuals of Richmond’s present that reveal the powerful history within. A forthcoming curriculum written by Rodney Robinson, a 20-year veteran of Richmond Public Schools and the 2019 National Teacher of the Year, will empower teachers to bring the film into their classrooms.
Tickets to the Smithsonian virtual screening and discussion will be made available on the Smithsonian’s website.
Media contacts:
Smithsonian: Brigitte Blachère, Program Manager, Smithsonian Associates / BlachBr@si.edu
Field Studio: Hannah Ayers and Lance Warren, Directors / info@fieldstudiofilms.com
VPM: Benae Mosby, Director of Marketing & Communications / bmosby@vpm.org