REEL SOUTH

After encountering discrimination in the Scuba diving world at a trade show, Dr. Albert “Doc” Jones decides to form his own club called “Underwater Adventure Seekers”.

Dr. Albert “Doc” Jones, founder of the National Association of Black Scuba Divers, reflects on a resonant event from his childhood where he witnessed a child drowning in a local river.

Dr. Albert “Doc” Jones, founder of the National Association of Black Scuba Divers, dedicated his life to uncovering lost histories beneath the ocean. When his team found the Henrietta Marie, the first recovered slave ship, he set out to honor those lost at sea. This film celebrates his mission to recover forgotten stories and preserve them for future generations.

A filmmaker uncovers footage from a family trip a year before her mother's death.

A filmmaker finds footage of her parents showing off their family car and gains insight into how her father viewed her mother.

Season 10 showcases inspiring stories of resilience, cultural richness, and innovation across the South, from groundbreaking science to powerful acts of justice.

Center Street in Birmingham, Alabama was nicknamed Dynamite Hill because it was bombed more than 50 times between 1947 and 1957. The street’s homes were targeted by white supremacists because of the rise of Black homeownership. Birmingham natives recall the wave of terror.

A resident of Birmingham’s Center Street (aka Dynamite Hill) recalls family friend Martin Luther King, Jr. and how conversations in his backyard sparked nationwide activism.

Between 1947 and 1967, Birmingham, Alabama, witnessed over 50 bombings targeting Black-owned homes. This film follows three individuals who, as children, lived through the terror and stayed in the city. Together, they seek to turn Birmingham’s painful history into a symbol of hope, resilience, and civil rights progress.

For all the wonders of the South — the food, the music, the people, the land — the collective heritage of the region is complicated, to say the least. But the ability to witness and understand that complexity and foster empathy is more important than ever. Which is why REEL SOUTH exists.

For the Whites, supporting Black farmers isn’t just a scientific effort– it’s a family tradition.

Cecil Shell, a Black farmer in Southern Virginia, shares his family history of tobacco farming and remembers traditional techniques from his childhood.

In Southern Virginia, Black farmers like Cecil Shell balance their interests in honoring their tradition of tobacco farming against the onset of solar energy farms exploding across the region. Through Cecil, the film explores one rural county’s shifting economic interests and his own efforts to steward the community, including Black landowners, through changing times.

Unrestricted access to beaches is a public right in Texas. But for the little known, magical, and untamed stretch of beach called Boca Chica, that right is curtailed when SpaceX takes flight. Boca Chica uncovers the mesmerizing beauty of this fragile coastline and the fight for free access for its longtime visitors whose memories and spirituality are rooted deep among the sandy shorelines.

One El Paso filmmaker calls on her Indigenous and Mexican ancestors to explore the cyclical starvation of the Rio Grande river and the human and inhumane factors contributing to the disappearance of its culture and bounty.

The site of the original settlement of the Cherokee, the Kituwah mound, was thought lost for centuries. In her moving retelling of the efforts to reclaim the tribe’s land, former Chief Joyce Dugan and fellow tribe members foreground the spiritual, emotional, and social impact of Kituwah’s legacy. This is the story of how the Cherokee finally took their “land back.”

A Black scientist brings together local Black farmers to combat the effects of climate change and create opportunities in Black agriculture for new generations in the Arkansas delta.

Juan Mancias is fighting for access to Boca Chica, a beach in Texas used by SpaceX, since it is an important cultural site for his tribe.

Once a sustainer of life, the Rio Grande now is plagued by drought, taking away an important source of cultural connection.

Joyce Dugan, former Chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, recalls her resolution to purchase land with historical importance to the tribe.