January 16th, 1865, American Civil War: General William Sherman includes in Special Field Orders No. 15 that 40 acres will be given to slaves as part of their freedom. It’s one of the largest redistributions of land in the country and, for generations since, the families have sought to either maintain or hold onto that land. Either by legal dealings or eminent domain, Black ownership of land is often striped away, leading to situations as explored in Raoul Peck’s 2023 documentary Silver Dollar Road, where generations of the Reels family are influenced and pressured by local officials and developers to cede control of the family land. Currently on the festival circuit and screening at the Atlanta Film Festival 2024 is Jennifer MacArthur’s new documentary Family Tree, which explores a similar idea, but from a different perspective. Like Peck’s film, Family Tree centers on Black-owned land in North Carolina, but where Silver Dollar Road is about the fight to maintain control, MacArthur’s is a bisected story focused on the preservation of generational wealth and the serious responsibility of forestry ownership. These two concepts are strongly intertwined, though the exploration of them does tend to reveal an imbalance in energy, thereby reducing the overall impact.
Tyrone Williams in Jennifer MacArthur’s documentary FAMILY TREE. Photo courtesy of Atlanta Film Festival.
MacArthur’s Family Tree focuses on two distinct families, each on different parallel paths. The first, the Jefferies Family, have owned their land for generations and it is currently in the care of sisters Nikki and Natalie Jefferies, who inherited their property from their grandmother. Nikki drives the current efforts to learn how to care for the land, to monitor it from being abused by outside individuals, and to ensure they’ll be able to pass it down themselves. The second, the Williams Family, is led by Tyrone Williams, the owner/operator of Fourtee Acres, a forestry, farming, garden, and rental organization, that is supported by his wife Edna and their three sons, Trevelyn, Tremaine, and Tyron. Tyrone’s goal is to ensure that his children have all the tools they need to maintain and grow their land well after they officially take over the business. Bridging the two families together are Sam Cook and Alton Perry, the former being the executive director of Forest Assets at North Carolina State University and the latter a director within the Sustainable Forestry and African American Land Retention Project, each serving as a mentor of sorts as both families are in a time of transition, but also helping each family find a new resource of their own within the North Carolina landowner community.
L-R: Sam Cook, Natalie Jefferies, Nikki Jefferies, and Alton Perry in Jennifer MacArthur’s documentary FAMILY TREE. Photo courtesy of Atlanta Film Festival.
With the players in mind, MacArthur sets about both exploring the current circumstances of the families against the larger legacy and trials of their families, as well as shedding light on the lesser known reality of forestry ownership by private families. MacArthur demonstrates this connection in the opening by, first, providing forestry statistics and historical data about location (which refers to this portion of North Carolina as the “wood basket”), then, introducing us to Nikki and Natalie who are walking through their property. MacArthur draws a direct line between the abstractness of cold data and the members of the Jefferies family, demonstrating that the wider view of sustainability and Black land ownership is not merely numbers on a screen, but real people facing real issues that are not just of the present, but of the past. This approach gently reminds audiences that while we’re observing two families in current success (either continued or burgeoning), it didn’t start this way for either and, as a result, brings with it a specific bittersweetness. There’s also a strange sense of responsibility that hangs over both families that is, to a great point, unfair, yet neither are unable to ignore, even if they wanted to. This is, of course, how their families each were given a parcel of land after slavery and, no matter how much of it remains in their custody, it’s something that others will always covet and try to get for themselves. We learn from Tyrone that he’s heard rumors of someone in their community who, a generation or two before, was able to get ahold of some of the family’s land by way of trade for funds to allow a Williams relative to get out of trouble. We learn in the opening of the film that someone has come to the Jefferies property to clear trees for an unknown purpose, completely ignoring the property markers. Through the focus on the families, audiences are invited in as they discuss current familial strife and the measures to make amends, as well as the steps taken to preserve what is as they move to expand. In both families’ cases, their mentality is much like forestry growth — what can be planted today that a future generation can benefit from. Shot with a mixture of talking head interviews and as-it-happens capturing, MacArthur plants the audience right in the thick of things so that we never forget why it matters. As a result, the scoring from Wendell Hanes (SportsCenter; That Girl Lay Lay) is often dour or non-existent, allowing the moment to take center stage, and the cinematography is intimate, with up-close or mid-range shots used to keep us nearby, like a confidante.
The Williams Family in Jennifer MacArthur’s documentary FAMILY TREE. Photo courtesy of Atlanta Film Festival.
In contrast, the segments which include or involve elements of forestry services are presented in a more upbeat fashion. The cinematography remains the same, colors presented in a natural, organic tone, a mix of one-on-one interviews and capturing of moments, but the scoring shifts toward energetic beats, infusing the information we’re shown or the conversations taking place with a sense of excitement. This does wonders to make the more dry data palatable and to give one a sense of adventuring when sitting in on even the briefest part of the convention attended by Tyrone and Nikki and her formerly-estranged father, Sidney, as father-daughter are partnering on cleaning and maintaining the family land. A downside to these portions is that not much time, if any, is given to explaining forestry concepts in the micro, resulting in the audience being forced to rely on context clues to track importance or intention. Though MacArthur does a great job of presenting data, Family Tree is first and foremost a story about family, so the majority of the focus is on their respective journeys of reconciliation and legacy exploration with the land services being a method of direction for the future.
The Jefferies Family in Jennifer MacArthur’s documentary FAMILY TREE. Photo courtesy of Atlanta Film Festival.
The way they are intertwined makes a great deal of sense informationally, but doesn’t always lend itself to being the most compelling as one is more familial drama-centric, more personal and affecting, while the other speaks to greater issues of climate restoration, sustainability, and global responsibility. It’s not that the two storylines don’t coalesce into a cohesive narrative, it’s that the energy one needs to remain engaged doesn’t sustain as easily. Family Tree is well-shot, contains an important message regarding care for our climate, and provides an opportunity for audiences to become more aware of where the bulk of forestry care resides. Fantastically, Family Tree takes great pains to ensure that audiences are well-informed regarding the guardianship bestowed upon these families and how there are systems in place that still operate in opposition to them, yet they succeed despite them. So, even if one finds themselves unable to stay totally locked from start to finish, the journey we join the Jefferies and Williams family on, for however brief a time, is still an impactful and effecting one.
Screening during Atlanta Film Festival 2024.
For more information, head to the official Family Tree ATLFF 2024 or The Film Collaborative webpage.
Final Score: 3.5 out of 5.
Share this:
Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
Do you think this may get a wider distribution?
I certainly hope it does. The screening during ATLFF appears to be one of three close together, so my hope is that it either continues running through festivals this year with a release in 2025 or it gets picked up sooner.