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By Allan Maurer

Bright Leaves, which Ross McElwee premiered at the Durham Full Frame Documentary Festival in April, 2003, as a "work in progress," went to Cannes the following May.

McElwee, best know for his wry, witty autobiographical film, Sherman's March, teaches film-making at Harvard and lives in Boston these days, but the scent of his native North Carolina infuses this film.

McElwee's most accomplished work so far, Bright Leaves compares the legacy of his great-grandfather, who the Duke's drove out of business by appropriating his "Bull" symbol for its own "Bull Durham" tobacco. The elder McElwee's lawsuits effectively ruined him.

"Bright Leaves" moves from the deep green tobacco fields of North Carolina, his home, to his awareness of the deadly legacy of tobacco, his relationship with his doctor father, his marriage, and his own son.

His masterful use of comparison and contrast draws numerous laughs. He kicks the single, flat stone that careless lawn-mowing has dispalced that marks his great grandfather's ill-cared-for grave. Then he and his camera visit magnificent Duke Chapel, a stone and stained-glass Gothic edifice on the campus of Duke University, where his great-grandfather's rival lies entombed under a life-sized marble sculpture of himself. Ross visits the former Duke Mansion in Charlotte, which is the size of a small school, and compares it with the modest home where he grew up in the same city's suburbs.

The inimitable Charleen Swansea, his onetime high school English teacher who appears in most of his films, points at the modest Charlotte ranch house where Ross grew up and comments, "That would make a good outhouse for the Duke Mansion," followed by raucous laughter.

While making the film, McElwee discovered a 1950s pot-boiler Hollywood film called Bright Leaves and thought for a time thought the tobacco baron played by Gary Cooper was based upon his great grandfather. This leads to a brief but fascinating interview with Cooper's co-star, Patricia Neal, once also Coop's lover.

McElwee has managed this feat of connecting a conventional movie star to his film before, making a public appearance by Burt Reynolds part of Sherman's March. "We're good friends now," McElwee said in a February 2006 appearence at the Carolina Film & Video Festival.

Bright Leaves is mature, thoughtful work from McElwee. His humor, mellower and less angst-ridden than in earlier films, remains everywhere still evident in this latest installment of his ongoing life story on film.

McElwee shoots film, not video, and the quality of his cinematography adds to the richness of watching this movie. However, even the luscious images of verdant tobacco fields and his memories of home are ambiguous in Bright Leaves. They are tinged not only with the nostalgia we all feel for home, but also with an ironic sense that the tobacco in those fields kills so many. The heady tobacco scent that permeates this film has more than a whiff of grave dirt.

Bright Leaves reminds us that life holds many paradoxical, contradictory, and melancholy moments. I live in the heart of North Carolina and drive daily by the stately Durham warehouses, Duke University and the tobacco fields you see in the film. I photographed the Duke Mansion in Charlotte for a ghost story that legend says occurred there. So McElwee's meditation on North Carolina has visceral meaning for me.

When I lived in Charlotte, I met both Charleen and one of the featured people in Sherman's March, Joyous Perin, a blues singer, at parties, and worked as a writer for one of the other women in the film. So I feel a personal connection to McElwee's work, which has resonance for me that have to do with his feel for the south and the specific ground I walk on daily.

But it's McElwee's unique and ironic sensibility that makes his films so unforgettable. Charleen, who criticized some of McElwee's earlier movies as self-indulgent, said at the Durham Full Frame Documentary Festival (where Bright Leaves debuted in a rough cut), that she believes now he's saying something more meaningful.

You can understand why she would feel that way after seeing Bright Leaves. This film will show you a good time whether you've seen any of McElwee's earlier films or not. But if you have seen them, you feel a rich sense of promise being fulfilled and a novelistic sense of plot resolutions. You find yourself looking forward to the next chapter.

Bright Leaves received rave reviews at the Cannes film festival in its first year of release. Visit www.brightleaves.com for more information.

Bright Leaves is currently showing at film festivals across the country, and opens at New York City's Film Forum on Aug. 25, 2004. Visit First Run Features for a full schedule.

Filmmaker McElwee shot Bright Leaves on location in North Carolina. Photo by Adrian McElwee.

McElwee's son, Adrian, helped film Bright Leaves.

Ross McElwee with Charleen Swansea in North Carolina while filming Bright Leaves. Photo by Mark Oldenburg.

Acclaimed documentary filmmaker,Ross McElwee, is a native of Charlotte, North Carolina. He currently teaches filmmaking at Harvard University. Bright Leaves is McElwee's seventh full-length documentary feature. Other award-winning titles include Sherman's March, Time Indefinite, and Six O'Clock News.

FILMOGRAPHY

Charleen, (1978) Portrait of North Carolina native Charleen Swansea, a potégé of Ezra Pound, poet, and innovative teacher in the public schools.
Best Documentary American Film Festival (NYC)
Red Ribbon Award Best Feature Documentary of 1980, Boston Society of Film Critics

Space Coast, (1978) A look into the lives of three families living on Cape Canaveral five years after the Apollo Moon Landing Program was phased out.
New American Filmmaker Series, Whitney Museum (NYC)
Museum of Modern Art, Cineprobe Film Series (NYC)
Special Merit Award North Carolina Film Festival, Best Film Award

Resident Exile, (1981) Two months in the life of an Iranian living in Houston, Texas during the Iranian/American hostage crisis.

Backyard, (1984) Autobiographical look at the filmmaker's relationship with his father, and his family's relationship with the black people who have worked for them.
First Prize Red River/Shreveport Film Festival
First Prize New England Film Festival
Outstanding Independent Film Atlanta Film Festival

Sherman's March: A Meditation on the Possibility of Romantic Love in the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation, (1986) Autobiographical documentary on life, love, nuclear preparedness, and the various neuroses of General William Sherman.
Sundance Film Festival
Best Feature Documentary USA Film Festival, (Dallas)
Cinema du Reel, Paris National Board of Film Critics, runner-up Best Feature Documentary, 1986
Selected by Library of Congress National Registry International Doc. Assoc: Top 20 Documentaries of All Time

Something To Do With the Wall, (1990) A portrait of the Checkpoint Charlie area of the Berlin Wall. Filmed in 1986 during the 25th anniversary of the building of The Wall and in 1989, immediately after the opening of The Wall.

Time Indefinite, (1993) Takes up where "Sherman's March" left off.
Best Documentary, Atlanta Film Festival
Best of Festival, New England Film Festival
Best of Festival, Sinking Creek Film Festival (Nashville)

Six O'Clock News, (1996) The filmmaker drives across America obsessively recording with his VCR catastrophic stories from local television news.
Best Documentary, Hawaii International Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
Independent Film Award, New England Film Festival

Bright Leaves, (2003), 35 mm, 107 minutes Produced, Directed, Filmed and Written by Ross McElwee