NFR Project: 'The Augustas'

The Augustas

Dir: Scott Nixon

Scr: N/A

Pho: Scott Nixon

Ed: Scott Nixon

Premiere: N/A

16 min.

Here’s a whimsical entry! It seems that traveling salesman Scott Nixon, of Augusta, Georgia, was an amateur film buff. He liked to film just about anything. He sought out an organizing principle that would make a film project cohere. He found one in the name of his home town.

How many Augustas were there, anyway? What were they like? For 20 years, as he traveled across the Midwest and the South for work, he documented other towns named Augusta. Usually he took pictures of the town’s main street, and highlighted signs with “Augusta” on them. He even tracked down little known, unincorporated places, and counties, and streets. He used 8-milliter and 16-millimeter cameras, shooting in both black and white and in color.

The result is a unique scrapbook, a catalogue of places with the same name. He strung all the footage together, making a crazy quilt of traveling shots through downtowns (if there were some), static shots of buildings, and other indicators of place names. It’s a breezy curio, a random look at the state of small-town America in the mid-20^th century.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Big Trail.