Allison Janae Hamilton Discusses ‘Venus of Ossabaw,’ Her Latest Film Project Shot in Savannah, Ga

Allison Janae Hamilton, the filmmaker and artist best known for her immersive works about Black life and womanhood explored through the environmental histories of the American South, has created her first cinema project, Venus of Ossabaw, which debuts this month at the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia.

Set in the late 18th century, Venus, like much of Hamilton’s work, is a wilderness narrative. The film follows a teenage girl as she escapes captivity on Ossabaw, a barrier island on the coast of Georgia, and travels through the treacherous terrain of South Georgia to freedom in Spanish Florida.

The film takes inspiration from the life of Titus, an enslaved man who fled Ossabaw in the late 1700s and built a community with others who had self-emancipated. Production took place on the island, which is currently owned by the State of Georgia but isn’t inhabited.

“We shot two days on the island, and then we shot two days in the Savannah area,” Hamilton says. “The whole crew slept there overnight. It was one step up from camping. We were in this dormitory situation. I joked that it was like Burning Man, because we had to bring everything there and take everything off, even our trash. It was a wild experience, but a great one.”

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