This beautiful and exceptionally insightful documentary offers a critical key to understanding one of America’s foremost writers. The face Faulkner in his lifetime showed the world was no more than a fictional construct, or a series of contradictory roles: gallant war hero, moody poet, hard-drinking man’s drinking man, dandy, gentleman farmer, exemplary husband, and father. This program probes beneath these masks to examine Faulkner’s turbulent, sometimes sordid, and ultimately tragic life, relating Faulkner the man to the society into which he was born and the body of work he produced. Carefully chosen extracts from his writings show the connections between his life and the South that shaped him, obsessed him, and finally—when he sided with black freedom struggles—turned viciously against him. With his own words, archival photographs and footage, and fictionalized reconstructions, it enables the viewer to grasp the framework and underpinnings of that very distinctive universe, William Faulkner’s South. Caution: we recommend that you preview this program before showing it to younger audiences. (45 minutes)