Watch “Goodbye, Morganza” (2023), a compelling documentary short film by Devon Blackwell. Explore a poignant story & click to learn more.
🏡 Goodbye, Morganza (2023) — Documentary Short Film by Devon Blackwell
A tender, archive‑rich short that maps one family’s loss across generations, Goodbye, Morganza turns a property dispute into a quiet elegy for home, memory, and what gets left behind — sometimes literally boxed into storage units.
🧠Overview
- Genre: Documentary · Short · Biography
- Director: Devon Blackwell 🎬
- Runtime: ~16 minutes ⏱️
- Core idea: An intimate, personal investigation of how a family lost the house they had owned since 1892 and how the youngest daughter must gather the fragments left in two storage units.
Watch the short:
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đź“– Story in brief
Devon Blackwell traces a lineage of ownership, absence, and the paperwork that unmoors a family. Through archival photographs, home movies, and close interviews, the film follows the fallout of a property dispute that culminated in displacement — and focuses on the small, human aftermath: a grandmother, heirlooms, and two storage units full of a life’s pieces waiting to be sorted.
🎨 Creative DNA & style
The film leans into archival storytelling: layered stills, hands‑on closeups, and the quiet ritual of unpacking memory. Intimacy is the camera’s currency — lingering on objects, textures, and the faces that carry the family’s history. That restrained, observational approach makes the legal and systemic forces feel personal and palpable rather than abstract. The short’s pacing lets silence breathe between facts, turning a legal tale into a humane meditation.
🌟 Themes & resonance
- Home as inheritance: Property is both shelter and story; losing a house can fracture family identity.
- Material memory: Objects become testimony — the small things that say who you were and who remains.
- Uneven systems: The film quietly points to how bureaucracy and disputes ripple across generations.
- Grief and repair: Picking through boxed possessions becomes an act of mourning and rebuilding.
đź’ˇ Humanized takeaway & where to watch
Goodbye, Morganza is less courtroom drama and more bedside conversation — it asks how you explain a vanishing home to the next generation and what it means to carry a family’s past forward. More to know at IMDb.
For viewers who love intimate, archive‑forward documentaries about history living inside people, this short is a precise, affecting watch. A clip and festival materials surfaced via distributors and festival listings — the film premiered on the festival circuit, and clips are available through outlets like Ouat Media and The New Yorker’s short documentary coverage.