It was fitting that a soiree and fundraiser for a documentary about Chapel Hill's Elizabeth Spencer featured hors d'oeuvres such as petite pimento cheese-cakes and cucumber cups with black-eyed pea caviar. Despite a half-century in Europe and Canada, Spencer and her work are steeped in the South.

Sharon Swanson, project director of "Elizabeth Spencer: Landscapes of the Heart," invited local literary figures to her home recently to view clips of the nearly complete film, and to meet filmmaker Kevin McCarthy, who is making the film as part of the Southern Documentary Fund.

Spencer, 87, has been publishing books and short fiction for 60 years. Her first novel, "Fire in the Morning," was published in 1948, launching a lifelong literary career. She came to Chapel Hill in 1986, and was quickly embraced by the town's close-knit literary circle.

At the screening, a hush filled the room as the film opened with rolling field of ripened cotton bolls, clay sandy roads and the muddy Mississippi River. Spencer narrates the story, her story, and friends and supporters including Hodding Carter III, her cousin Joe McCain (brother of Sen. John McCain), writers Allan Gurganus and Lee Smith, playwright Craig Lucas, and composer Adam Guettel offer insight into the life of one of the South's most intriguing writers.

McCarthy, who teaches screenwriting at Dartmouth College, said that upon first reading Spencer's writing years ago, he found her work daring and perplexing.

"'The Voice at the Back Door' is shocking," he said, speaking of one of her novels, a finalist for the National Book Award. "She was talking about race and sexual politics in Mississippi in the '30s, long before that was acceptable."

McCarthy, originally from London and now a resident of Vermont, had little exposure to the South until he visited Mississippi last summer when he began filming. That trip, he said, gave him an intimate glimpse of Spencer's South.

"Many places have changed, and then others haven't changed at all," he said. "I don't necessarily believe in the North/South divide, but some of these little towns could be called their own very different world."

Spencer was born in 1921 in Carrollton, Miss. She experienced first-hand the racial and gender inequities of the American South, tragedies that would eventually drive a wedge between her and her family. In 1953, she won a Guggenheim Fellowship and left the land of her birth for a life in Italy, where she would write some of the most poignant portraits of race in America. Her father, Luther Spencer, would later disinherit his only daughter over her writing, which he felt was "not suitable for a well brought up southern lady."

McCarthy and Spencer have developed a unique relationship, one he says took time as Spencer gradually dropped her reserve and opened up.

"I find that all subjects have a natural wariness when someone wants to observe and look into their life," said McCarthy. "My focus has been to be faithful to Elizabeth and reproduce this story with integrity."

"Landscapes of the Heart" follows Spencer as she returns to the place of her birth after half a century in Italy, Canada and Chapel Hill, where she taught creative writing at UNC. It's an emotional moment in the film when Spencer returns to the family homeplace, once a bustling plantation and now a derelict shell. Spencer also visits the Carrollton Courthouse, site of the infamous Carrollton Massacre in 1886, in which a mob killed a number of black residents. That incident would form the spine of "The Voice at the Back Door."

Swanson, a native southerner, has written extensively on the life and work of Spencer and did an oral history and taped interview with Spencer in 2007 for the UNC archives.

"When Kevin McCarthy saw the original footage, he told me he thought her story was one of international interest and importance," said Swanson. "I don't think either of us knew that it would take a large part of at least two years of our life when we committed to getting Elizabeth's story to a larger audience. Yet it has been a great experience so far, with more adventures to come."

Swanson calls "Landscapes of the Heart" a brave woman's reflections on class, race and the changing role of women during a defining century in the history of the South, and of the country.

McCarthy says filming "Landscapes of the Heart" has been a journey that wasn't always clearly marked.

"You shouldn't actually do a film like this if you know the outcome," he said. "Elizabeth's story has shaped and reshaped itself as we've gone along, and it really has been an amazing project."

McCarthy will wrap up filming when he follows Spencer's story to Italy this summer.

MORE INFORMATION

The Elizabeth Spencer Project is fiscally sponsored by the Southern Documentary Fund. Tax deductible contributions can be made payable to:

Southern Documentary Fund, 762 Ninth Street, #574, Durham, North Carolina 27705

You can contact Sharon Swanson at sharon_swanson@earthlink.net