New 4K restoration – 40th anniversary!

Armed with a 16mm camera and a grant to make a documentary about the lingering aftermath of William Tecumseh Sherman’s 1864 march to the sea, Ross McElwee gets sidetracked. After his girlfriend breaks up with him, Ross shifts his attention from the historical to the personal, to the battlefield of modern love, and embarks on a sociological chronicle that documents the courting rites and rituals of the New South. A generous and humanistic portrait of several remarkable women that Ross meets along the way, Sherman’s March sketches its characters with novelistic sensitivity: Pat, an aspiring actress with a yen for Burt Reynolds; Claudia, a roller-skating interior designer; Jackie, the activist whose anti-nuclear advocacy dovetails with Ross’s deepest fears; and above all, Charleen Swansea, Ross’s mentor and a one-woman Greek chorus of unsolicited romantic counsel. A landmark of first-person filmmaking that presaged everything from Michael Moore to reality TV, Sherman’s March is now available in a new 4K restoration.

National Film Registry – Official Selection, 2000

One of the 20 Greatest Documentaries Ever Made – International Documentary Film Association (IDFA) –

“One of the best documentaries and one of the best comedies ever made.” – Patton Oswalt

“Completely eye-opening for me, and for so many of us who make stories for a living.” – Ira Glass

“A filmmaker-anthropologist with a rare appreciation for the eccentric details of our edgy civilization.” – Vincent Canby, New York Times

“Original and sneakily endearing … Two of the reasons to stick it out with McElwee for the film’s full 155 minutes is his genuine affection for these women, and the women themselves, who become a composite picture of the battiest and brightest of the early 1980s.” – Sheila Benson, Los Angeles Times

“Quirky, funny, and fascinating …a comic filmmaker with the rare ability to turn personal obsession into a delightful, rueful, and resonant American odyssey.” – David Ansen, Newsweek

“McElwee is the Mark Twain of documentary filmmaking, a purveyor of American dreams whose wit is surpassed only by his uncanny knack for observation.” – Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine