Atun-Shei Films

Andrew Rakich (born December 1991), is a filmmaker who hosts the educational YouTube channel Atun-Shei Films. He is best known for Checkmate, Lincolnites!, a series debunking tenets of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, as well as videos exploring other aspects of American history. The channel also occasionally covers topics like film, literature and politics. In 2023, Rakich premiered his first widely released feature film, The Sudbury Devil, to positive audience reviews.https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_sudbury_devil 
==Early Life==
Rakich was raised in the small suburban town of Wayland, Massachusetts, the colonial history of which he would later cover on his YouTube channel. He started making home movies in first grade and was heavily involved in his high school's theater department.https://waylandstudentpress.com/139/wspn/andy-rakich-the-movie-director/ He first became interested in history as a child from watching the 1999 movie The Mummy.http://dailygrindhouse.com/thewire/daily-grindhouse-interview-director-of-satanic-faith-based-folk-horror-the-sudbury-devil-andrew-rakich/ 
He attended film school at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and after graduating got a seasonal job as a tour guide at Gettysburg National Military Park. He relocated to New Orleans in 2014, where he also worked as a tour guide and made independent films in his free time.https://www.atunsheifilms.com/about
==Career==
In 2016, Rakich founded Atun-Shei Films as a minor production company. In 2018 he began making regular videos on the Atun-Shei Films YouTube channel, reviewing historical films as well as making simple educational videos about topics like King Philip's War and the early history of New Orleans.
The following year, after a video about the Confederate monuments of New Orleans attracted vitriol and criticism from Confederate apologists, he responded to the comments by putting them in the mouth of "Johnny Reb," a comic stereotype of a gentlemanly Confederate soldier, in the video Confederate DESTROYS Yankee with FACTS and LOGIC.
Though initially intended as a one-off video, Rakich quickly continued the format in Checkmate, Lincolnites!, a full series with a runtime of ten episodes. Though Johnny Reb's humorous comments were first corrected by Rakich himself in plainclothes, he later donned Union blue to debunk Lost Cause myths in the guise of a separate character, Billy Yank, a cool-headed and rational debater who often gets frustrated with Johnny but nonetheless treats him as a friend. Rakich has stated that Checkmate, Lincolnites! was inspired by fellow YouTubers RedLetterMedia and ContraPoints.https://youtu.be/Buq5K92j3P8
Another famous Civil War related piece of Atun-Shei Films media is Rakich's scathing review of Ron Maxwell's Gods and Generals in his video essay Why Gods and Generals is Neo-Confederate Propaganda (and Objectively Sucks). The video has since become extremely popular and is frequently referenced online in discussions of the movie. Rakich later came to regret certain aspects of the review, writing in a pinned comment two years later that "I had 1000 subscribers when I made this video, and if I had known then that it would reach an audience of millions, I would have gone about it very differently."https://youtu.be/S3E2FdedPwU
Also in 2019, Rakich released his first annual Leif Eriksson Day special, a tradition he has kept up since where every year on October 9th he releases a video about the Norse exploration of America.
Rakich then began the series The Witchfinder General, a comedy series where a devout, iron-hearted Puritan witch hunter reacts to modern politics and pop culture, with most of the dialogue taken from 17th century treatises. In character as the Witchfinder General, Rakich speaks in a reconstructed accent called Original Pronunciation and dialect accurate to the time period.
In his words the channel "languished in obscurity"https://youtu.be/Buq5K92j3P8 until the COVID-19 pandemic, when the fourth episode of Checkmate, Lincolnites! went viral and Rakich started making videos full time.
In 2021, the Atun-Shei Films team produced the first episode of a narrative series called Frozen '50s Man, about an archetypal 50's-era private detective who gets transported to the modern era and has to contend with the temporal culture shock. As of February 2024 there are three published episodes.
Another notable Atun-Shei character is Klaus, an enigmatic Nazi archaeologist with occult supernatural powers who travels across the multiverse spreading chaos and evil.https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Characters/AtunSheiFilms He is the main villain in Frozen '50s Man and has appeared in multiple episodes of Checkmate, Lincolnites! His most famous appearance is in the viral sketch My N@zi Roommate, which has accumulated 7.7 million views.
In 2023, Rakich premiered the limited series The Birth of an American Town, about the 17th century history of his hometown of Wayland, Massachusetts. Also in 2023 he started The Abolitionists, a series aimed at progressive activists providing biographies of social justice pioneers throughout history. Rakich calls it his "most political series."https://youtu.be/OfFrHOhKZDo
After years of COVID delays, Rakich finally filmed his longtime passion project The Sudbury Devil, a Puritan folk horror film, in April 2022.https://youtu.be/DKmWqPLTKGQ He claims that it is the first movie ever made to feature the Original Pronunciation accent of the 17th century. Tabitha King, Stephen King's wife, is an executive producer on the film.https://366weirdmovies.com/366-underground-the-sudbury-devil-2023/ The film premiered at the Satanic Temple world headquarters in Salem, Massachusetts in September 2023 and had a limited theatrical run in the US, UK and Australia. After becoming disillusioned by what he sees as a predatory streaming distribution industry, Rakich initially self-published the movie for streaming on his website.https://youtu.be/-d7980RkYHw It was later released on Tubi, Prime Video, and Apple TV+. 
Upon its streaming release, The Sudbury Devil was praised by other historical YouTubers like The Cynical Historian and Esoterica for its accuracy to the period. The critical response has been mostly positive and critics have praised the film's story, score and performances, though some criticized the special effects and took issue with the graphic sexual content. A reviewer for Dread Central called it "historical horror done right" and named it as their favorite film of the year.https://www.dreadcentral.com/reviews/462299/the-sudbury-devil-review-this-is-historical-horror-done-right/ A review in Trill Mag described it as "a movie made by a YouTuber that doesn’t suck. That’s not that common." https://www.trillmag.com/entertainment/tv-film/the-sudbury-devil-youtube-movies-done-right/ 
One June 7th 2024 Atun-Shei Films released THE CORNERSTONE OF JOHNNY REB, the final episode of Checkmate, Lincolnites! The finale was a combination of a normal episode and a mini-movie which resolved the series' plotlines. Audiences received it with universal acclaim, with dozens of commenters declaring it one of the best YouTube videos ever made.https://youtu.be/gyt0bZms5zU
==Personal Life==
Rakich claims to have been a believer of the Lost Cause Myth until the 2015 Charleston church shooting. He later clarified that while he believed some of the historiography pushed by the Lost Cause until that point, he was not raised in the ideology nor was his family particularly conservative. This was partially done in response to many claiming his Checkmate, Lincolnites! series was "the fervor of the converted."https://youtu.be/U6mOoQBafdc
Rakich is an outspoken vegan and environmentalist. The end credits of The Sudbury Devil claim "no animals were harmed or eaten in the making of this film." He has spoken critically of what he sees as capitalism's role in climate change, saying in the video essay Overanalyzing Ravenous that "the boys at the stock exchange will still be buying and selling until the moment their heads disappear beneath the water." https://youtu.be/roRD4F9pg5s In the same video he claimed political conservatives lack empathy. He has repeatedly expressed strong support for black civil rights and LGBTQ+ rights. In videos he has expressed disdain for authoritarian governments,https://youtu.be/otTsbqK4U7o and in a livestream described himself as having a "libertarian bent."https://www.youtube.com/live/uPuQlICdrYI
Rakich married his long time girlfriend in 2023.https://www.youtube.com/live/tkoJMYFryG4
==References==
Category:Educational YouTubers
Category:American YouTubers
Category:Users who joined in 2016