Ross himself does not appear in the film and rarely hears him speak, with a notable exception. In the middle of “Hale County,” he, or maybe we're in a car, driving on the main roads of a small town. Then we suddenly sway left and left, heading towards the plantation style house. This gives you a glimpse into the trees.
Suddenly, the film is cut into black and white archival footage of a black-faced black actor, wearing a straw hat and a check suit, staring at something through the bushes. The footage comes from the unfinished 1913 film “Lyme Kiln Club Field Day,” and appears to be captured in the moment when he is not playing the known minstrelsy. He's just looking at something. The way the scene is built feels like he's watching Ross pull into a plantation house today. The scene moves back and forth between the car driving home and the actor staring at the bushes, creating a relationship between them.
In the garden, a man throws tires over the fire, producing black smoke. Ross' camera turns upwards and looks at light filters through the trees and smoke, making it fascinating to the strange sight. As he sees the light, he hears a man's voice coming out of the background and asks Ross what he's doing. He explains that he is filming the light of “really beautiful” and expresses joy when others say something about getting a camera. “More black people in this area need to make photos and take photos and things,” Ross says.
The scene returns to Burt Williams, who is still peeking from the past. He leaned a little. And he smiles, pleased with what he sees, walking forward from the bushes. Perhaps a bit of the history of this house – suggested only obliquely by the film itself – was reclaimed by Ross' focus.
I think Ross is quoting this sequence from “Hale County” in “Nickel Boys.” Early in the film, Elwood, the teenage protagonist, is driven in a police car to Nickel Academy, the infamous reform agency he lives in. We are behind his eyes, so from the back seat of the car there is a road lined with lush green trees. The scene is directed against each other with a short sequence from the 1958 film The Defiant Ones. This is also mentioned in Whitehead's novel, in which Sidney Poitier, who plays the prisoner, is surrounded by white prisoners behind the truck. He sings the song of resistance, “Bowlin' From Green (From Bowlin Green),” but others listen.
