This evening's program will feature the following titles, plus some surprises, including archival footage, last minute work from the online hip hop community and intimate personal recordings from the long-term residents of New Orleans.
After Katrina: Rebuilding St. Bernard Parish
directed by Adam Finberg
"A sensitive elegy to a working-class community's destroyed neighborhood and its passionate commitment to rebuild. Rather than sweeping statements of catastrophe, we are offered intimate views of devastation and the nitty-gritty challenges that confront the residents. An elegant use of music reflects the spirit of the enterprise and a surprising optimism permeates the efforts and makes believers of us all." (FullFrame) 2006, 22 min, USA
Putting the River in Reverse
directed by Matthew Buzzell
"In November 2005, just three months after Hurricane Katrina had devastated New Orleans, English pop maestro Elvis Costello joined local R&B legend Allen Toussaint in a Crescent City recording studio to undertake the first major New Orleans recording sessions since Katrina made landfall." (Tribeca Film Festival) 2006, 33 min, USA
Something in the Air
directed by Alfonso Alvarez
"I was contacted by the documentary filmmaker Besty Weiss to look for footage in Craig Baldwin's collection, for a piece that she's working on about the impact of the flooding and hurricane on her community in New Orleans. I managed to cull a range of images from mostly educational, documentary and news reel films. Very few of the films were specifically about NOLA. However, they fit a general request for images regarding the delta, rivers, flooding, river boats & etc…. I massaged the images into a proto-narrative/doc form. I used a two-prong approach to create the flow of the film. The first is via the overall graphic quality of the images. I established location and created an acknowledgement of place. The second approach was dictated by the lyrical content of the music I used. I actually looked at a number of different versions of the song, but none of them were quite what I wanted. After I'd made the first general edit, I hand-contact printed the original film on to Hi-Con B&W film and then hand-processed the raw material." (Alvarez) 2006, 8 min, USA
New Orleans Furlough
directed Amir Bar-Lev
"A disoriented soldier returning home from Iraq wanders New Orleans after its destruction by Hurricane Katrina." (Silverdocs) 2006, 10 min, USA