On the occasion of the launch of These Long Shadows written by Monica Nelson, Atelier Éditions and Now Instant present a special screening of Suzannah Herbert's Natchez (2025), followed by a free public reception where copies of These Long Shadows will be available for purchase in-store.

Please note: admission to the reception is free, and does not require a screening ticket to attend.

In These Long Shadows, 14 personal, working, and domestic spaces of distinguished women are the framework for this exploration of public history in the American South. The entries are arranged chronologically and comprise artists Elisabet Ney and Clementine Hunter; musician Nina Simone; authors Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, and Margaret Mitchell; poet Anne Spencer; activists Pauli Murray and Ida B. Wells; architect Amaza Lee Meredith; Girl Scouts founder Juliet Gordon Low; socialites Julia Nutt and Emily Inman; and plantation owner Adelicia Acklen.

Covering a period of 186 years, the book's chapters include original photography, first-person research, and archival material to illuminate these women’s legacies. It examines what we experience when we visit house museums and provokes questions about authority, the archive, and how the past is written about today. Though women are underrepresented in the historical narrative, there are women behind every preservation movement, and white women, specifically, had a great hand in spinning some of the mythology integral to the United States.

These Long Shadows, New York-based author Monica Nelson's second book, constitutes the third volume of The Illustrated America, Atelier Éditions’ ongoing series excavating America’s cultural past.

Monica Nelson is the author of Edible Flowers: How, Why, and When We Eat Flowers (Monacelli, 2021), These Long Shadows: Women’s House Museums in the American South (Atelier Éditions, 2026), Antiques Today (Princeton Architectural Press, 2027), and is the founding photo and design director of Wilder Quarterly. She writes about history through material culture, design, and nature.

"As a Southerner, I’m passionate about making films that reflect and question the ways legacies, race, class and myths shape Southern society and identities. Through NATCHEZ, I am attempting to converse with and explore the vastly different ways Americans understand our shared history and each other.

I first became interested in antebellum American history when I was invited to a wedding on a plantation. I started to think about the ways in which people use historic sites today purely for their own enjoyment, contributing to erasure. I realized that American culture has masked history to such an extent that many people do not recognize the layered complexity of plantations and historic sites. I then knew I had to make a film that not only challenges people’s romanticized perceptions of antebellum history but one that also disrupts assumptions that flatten the South and Southerners. My intent is to show how the various interpretations of history affect individuals ’lives, livelihoods and identities.

Over many years of interviewing tourists, tour guides, scholars and local Natchezians, there was one line I heard repeatedly: We must know our history or we are bound to repeat it. It was a cliché I grew tired of hearing, but in 2025 it couldn't feel more relevant. People from all walks of life, all political persuasions, ages, classes and races, expressed this same sentiment to me. While ultimately my film never utters these words, it does make clear that the past is very much alive for everyone. It’s a powerful force that shapes our interactions with each other and how we all hold onto power, identity, history and memory. And no matter how beautiful we try to make it all look, the reality of the hurt and pain millions of Americans have endured can never be erased. This past lives too deep within each and every one of us."

- Suzannah Herbert

Suzannah Herbert makes films about the American South. Herbert’s directorial debut Wrestle was nominated for two News & Documentary Emmys and named one of the top 5 documentaries of 2019 by the National Board of Review. Wrestle (Oscilloscope/Independent Lens) was lauded as “Superb” by the Los Angeles Times, and hailed a New York Times' Critic’s Pick. As an editor, Herbert has collaborated on Bob Dylan film projects, most recently editing the permanent experiential film at Tulsa’s Bob Dylan Center. She edited Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga’s Grammy-nominated music video, “I Get a Kick Out of You,” and the award-winning vérité film A Woman on The Outside.

Awarded Best Documentary at its premiere at the 2025 Tribeca Festival, Natchez has since been honored with 19 awards on the festival circuit and was named one of the top 5 documentaries of 2025 by the National Board of Review. The New Yorker's Richard Brody called Natchez “Stunning.” Oscilloscope Laboratories released the film in over 80 cities and it was broadcast on PBS’s Independent Lens in May 2026.

Please note: seating for the screening is limited. Box Office opens thirty minutes prior to the listed showtime. Guests may add their name to the standby list upon arrival. Online ticket sales will be honored up until 15 minutes after the scheduled showtime; at that time, any unclaimed seats will be released for in-store purchase on a first-come, first-served basis. All Sales Final.