Possum Town

Possum Town is a portrait of Columbus, Mississippi, as discovered through several present-day figures whose stories intersect with a rich photographic archive of the historic town. O.N. Pruitt, Columbus' "picture man" in the early 1900s, documented the gamut of Southern life, from the sublime to the everyday to the horrors of racial violence. The Pruitt collection is one of the largest known photographic records of a small Southern town in the Jim Crow era.

Guided by these timeless images, the film explores the same themes in the lives of people today, who in turn reflect on their place within the town's considerable history: the first Black man to participate in the town's long-running tour of antebellum homes fills his garden with hand-carved African sculptures; the young heir to a marble factory — which once made Confederate monuments — cares for the town's historic cemeteries; a gay horticulturist reevaluates his relationship to his church amidst a national Methodist schism and searches for community; the town's longest-tenured county supervisor — and the first Black man to hold the job — runs for his final term and considers the ghosts of his rural upbringing; a fisherman extols the area's natural beauty; and homegrown Pruitt expert Berkley Hudson combs through the trove of translucent green negatives, placing them delicately on a light box and reflecting on the revelations they bare.

Comprised of over 140,000 negatives, the Pruitt collection evokes a treasure trove of historical information about daily existence in Columbus as lived 100 years ago, and yet the contemporary resonances are abundant. Possum Town explores how and why we look at images, ways of seeing, and the harmony and discord between images of the past and present. The film suggests, as does the vast scope of Pruitt's work, the boundless connection we have to each other and our histories — and how history never ceases as it continues to shape life today.

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