Somebody’s Gone
Brother Theotis Taylor harvested turpentine, preached, and sang spirituals in a sublime falsetto that made him the pride of South Georgia. Driven by a divine vision, his son, Hubert, filmed it all. Forty years later, Somebody’s Gone, a new feature-length documentary, that completes the story of a great artist through the archive of his prodigal son.
Somebody’s Gone asks who creates and keeps our images and memories, who they’re for, and how memories of the past shape and reshape our present. Sustained encounters with local artists, particularly elders of color, are rare in documentary. Home videos are often treated as B-roll, not as material history and artistic expression. But these intimate micro-histories reveal how larger political, social, and economic forces affect real individuals surviving in real communities in real time.
Access to local history and existing archives has been fraught for the Black community in South Georgia, like many parts of America, kept behind institutional barriers, real or perceived. Brother Taylor didn’t know videos of his TV performances, which he’d sought out for years, were freely available on the University of Georgia library website. “Some things are locked down from you,” he said.
Somebody’s Gone is currently in post-production, with support from Creative Capital, The Sundance Institute Documentary Fund, The National Endowment for the Arts, the BAVC MediaMaker Fellowship, AXS Film Fund, as well as an ITVS Open Call co-production deal.
“Some things are locked down from you.”
Pictures of You Home Movie Festival
Dec 2-3, 2023 The producers of Somebody’s Gone presented the inaugural “Pictures of You Home Movie Festival,” seeking to celebrate and preserve local Black History in its most intimate and personal form. The Festival was held at the Grand Theatre, in Fitzgerald Georgia, supported by the Association For Cultural Equity.
Community Archiving Workshop
Saturday, Dec 2nd was an opportunity for local community members to bring in their home videos, film reels, photographs and negatives to consult with professional archivists on preservation resources and learning opportunities including film inspection, scrapbooking, and preparation for digitization of their family collections. Participants included staff from The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) Great Migration Home Movie Project, the Community Archiving Workshop (CAW), and the University of Georgia Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection (UGA).
“I filmed the Black side of town and bought the archive of the white.”
Home Movie Festival
On Sunday, Dec 3rd, Hubert hosted screenings of video and film footage supplied by members of the local community as well material from his own extensive archive which includes never-before-seen performance footage of his father, Brother Theotis Taylor. Hubert and I also had a discussion about the town’s Black History and the importance of self-documentation followed by a Q&A. The afternoon concluded with live Gospel performances by Hubert’s sister, Pauline as well as the Five Stars of Harmony. The festival was supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.