An unsettling, archival history of the world’s largest Confederate monument
‘The Lost Cause will boast a monument towering above all the triumphal arches and columns of ancient Rome and more enduring than the pyramids.’
Conceived by a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1914 but not fully completed until 1970, the Confederate Memorial Carving at Stone Mountain in Georgia depicts and memorialises the Confederate Civil War leaders Jefferson Davis, Robert E Lee and Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson, and is the largest carving of its kind in the world. In Graven Image, the US filmmaker Sierra Pettengill uses archival footage to document the carving’s century-spanning history. The result is deeply unsettling, revealing how the enduring dream of the Confederacy, centred around a deeply racist ideology, is laundered and repackaged from generation to generation.

videoHistory
The dry-stacked stones of Zimbabwe are a medieval engineering wonder
7 minutes

videoTechnology and the self
Inside a tattoo parlour where hateful images are covered for free
11 minutes

videoKnowledge
A Kichwa activist on ayahuasca’s rise – and what it really means to her people
15 minutes

videoHistory
In Stalin’s home city in Georgia, generations clash over his legacy
20 minutes

videoHistory
In the face of denial, this film uncovers the hidden scars of Indonesia’s 1998 riots
21 minutes

videoArt
Defying classification, fantastical artworks reframe the racism of Carl Linnaeus
8 minutes

videoHistory
Hags, seductresses, feminist icons – how gender dynamics manifest in witches
13 minutes

videoEngineering
Can monumental ‘ice stupas’ help remote Himalayan villages survive?
15 minutes

videoFairness and equality
There’s a dirty side to clean energy in the metal-rich mountains of South Africa
10 minutes