Failure was the goal -Southern Style

Sherman's March-- In the early 1980's Ross McElwee got a grant to make a documentary about the aftermath of Gen. W. T. Sherman's 'march to the sea' , a brutal campaign that razed large areas of the south. McElwee then got dumped and decided to film his attempt to find a new girlfriend.

on netflix: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://ro3011.k12.sd.us/event/pics/general-william-tecumseh-

from a 1986 times review Times review:
AT the beginning of Ross McElwee's ''Sherman's March,'' the film maker tells us that he had originally planned a documentary about the aftereffects, which are still to be found in Georgia and the Carolinas, of the ''total warfare'' waged by Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman during the final months of the Civil War.

Mr. McElwee, who was born and bred in Charlotte, N.C., is fascinated by the many ironies of Sherman's career. Not the least of these is that Sherman is more vividly remembered in the South, which he loved and laid waste, than in the North, where he'd once been a great hero.

In the course of Mr. McElwee's own march to the South from Boston, where he was then living, something devastating happened. On a stopover in New York, his girlfriend left him. It was a traumatic experience, he tells us on the soundtrack. He couldn't go on. He felt aimless, adrift. Yet he still had his camera and sound equipment, the $9,000 grant to finance the film, as well as (and this is most important) his passion to make a film - any film.