Black Lives Matter in the Best Films of 2014

More than 100 years after the birth of cinema, it sometimes feels like every story has been told. But the best films of 2014 dared to break out of their genres, explore new ways of filmmaking, and inspire viewers. Some of them even provided tools for popular understanding of our current political moment. This year, Selma, Tales of the Grim Sleeper, and Out In The Night all told stories of a criminal justice system harming Black communities, while Dear White People used satire to address racist power structures. Documentaries like The Great Invisible and Citizenfour attacked government and corporate malfeasance, science fiction films like Snowpiercer helped imagine future revolutions, and Pride delivered a lesson in movement solidarity.

Below are my top 14 films of the year. As always, many of them didn’t receive the distribution they deserved, but will no doubt live on as more audiences discover them online.

14 – Dear White People – After months of hype and viral videos, Dear White People had a lot of anticipation to live up to. While the film focused narrowly on life at an elite, mostly white, college, it managed to pull in a wider range of issues and themes. This fresh and original film served notice that writer/director Justin Simien, and his talented young cast, are rising talents to watch.

13 - Whiplash - Damien Chazelle’s Sundance award winner was a tense, brutal drama about a young man and his mentor/teacher. Or, as Barbara Herman called it, the “best homoerotic S&M film about jazz drumming you'll see this year.”

12 – Coherence – This film slipped under most critic’s radar, but filmmaker James Ward Byrkit’s debut about alternate realities is a smart and challenging low-budget sci-fi mind-bender. It’s the kind of film you want to watch again right after it ends, to keep unlocking its puzzles.

11 – The Babadook – Writer/director Jennifer Kent’s debut is the scariest movie I’ve seen in years. In a genre often dominated by male filmmakers and sexist tropes, Kent’s film is a breath of fresh air, and a truly terrifying balance of psychological and supernatural horror that keeps you in the dark, jumping at shadows.

10 – Edge of Tomorrow – It’s not often that a Hollywood blockbuster starring Tom Cruise makes my list, but Doug Liman, director of Bourne Identity and Go, among other films, is a filmmaker who knows how to make an old genre come alive. Edge of Tomorrow is a rare find; a smart and exciting Hollywood sci-fi thriller.

9 – The Great Invisible – So much has been written and filmed about the BP Drilling Disaster of 2010, that it’s shocking to find stories that haven’t been told. But filmmaker Margaret Brown (who also went behind the scenes of Mobile, Alabama’s racially segregated Mardi Gras in 2009’s The Order of Myths) has given this disaster the documentary it deserves, with stunning access to both families on the Gulf Coast, and to men with money and power who work within the oil industry.

8 – Snowpiercer – Reportedly, a clash between Korean director Bong Joon-ho and distributor Harvey Weinstein kept this stunning film from wide release. Snowpiercer is a thrilling allegory of class struggle in a dystopian future that puts The Hunger Games to shame.

7 – Tales of the Grim Sleeper – Before seeing this documentary, I’d never heard of the Grim Sleeper, an alleged serial killer arrested in South Central Los Angeles in 2010. This film presents a case that the race, gender and class of the victims meant the news media and police were not interested in stopping the killer. Over a period of more than two decades, scores of women, almost all of them Black street-based sex workers and/or drug users, were raped and killed while the police and media turned a blind eye. Veteran documentarian Nick Broomfield talks to a coalition of Black women activists in South Central LA who worked to pressure the police and media to pay attention. He also talks to women on the street who encountered (and narrowly escaped) the killer. One woman gave police a sketch of the man, and led officers to his block more than a decade before he was caught, but the LAPD apparently did nothing with the information. Other women Broomfield finds were afraid to even talk to the police. This film is a disturbing and difficult companion to the Black Lives Matter movement.

6 – Out in the Night – The Jersey Four, a group of young African American lesbians who were vilified in the media and aggressively prosecuted after they fought back against a hate crime, is an incredibly important story. And filmmaker blair dorosh-walther has created a powerful and urgent film that captures the lives and families of these young women, and shows a criminal justice system more interested in attacking them than protecting them. This film needs to be widely seen.

5 – Citizenfour – Filmmaker Laura Poitras was already making a film about (and had been a victim of) US government surveillance when Edward Snowden came to her. Long before this film came out, she had already made history by helping bring Snowden’s revelations to a worldwide audience. All this film needed to do to secure its place in history was to be a record of those revelations. But Poitras chose instead to make a film that takes the viewer inside a historical moment, making this not just important for what it tells, but also an example of bold and creative filmmaking.

4 – Selma – Ava DuVernay’s last film, Middle of Nowhere, made my 2012 best-of list with a moving story of families affected by the prison industrial complex. That it’s nearly unprecedented for a Black woman filmmaker to make a big budget Hollywood film shows how far we haven’t come, and this film gives a glimpse of what we’ve been missing. While Selma may not give enough weight to the grassroots activists of SNCC, and (despite the cries of some historians) may be too respectful to President Johnson, ultimately this is a powerful document of an important historical moment. 

3 – Pride - If you like uplifting films about inter-movement solidarity and class struggle, this British crowd-pleaser from Matthew Warchus is perfect for you. A moving, funny, charming, film based on a true story of gay activists in the 80s that built an alliance with striking miners in Thatcher’s Britain.

2 – Boyhood – Enough has been written about Richard Linklater’s bold and wise film that there’s no reason to add my praise. But even without the concept of watching actors age over a period of twelve years, this film feels like the culmination of what Linklater has been building towards throughout a career that started with the formal experimentation of Slacker and continued to push against narrative boundaries from Waking Life to A Scanner Darkly, Before Sunrise, and Fast Food Nation.

1 – Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) – Filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu announced himself as a talent to watch with his debut Amores Perros, but nothing in his career to date comes close to the triumph of this film. Behind the film’s play within a play storyline lies a filmmaking tour de force that succeeds on every technical level and leaves the viewer breathless, with no wasted moment or misstep.

Among other notable films this year: Concerning Violence feels more like a doctoral thesis than a movie, but if you are interested in the history of anti-colonial struggle in Africa, and want to see old footage of Amilcar Cabral and Thomas Sankara, and hear narration based on text by Frantz Fanon read by Lauryn Hill, then this film may be perfect for you. Jodorowski’s Dune, directed by Frank Pavich, documents a brilliant film that almost existed, but even without being made proved itself more influential than most films ever can hope for. Gareth Evan’s The Raid 2 (part one made my 2012 list) continued to beat all of Hollywood action films at their own game. Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler was as creepy as its name, and can be read as a blistering attack on both local TV news and capitalism. David Fincher’s Gone Girl was either built upon misogynist stereotypes, or a comment on stultifying roles of patriarchy. Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, the Iranian feminist vampire film, is moody, clever and surprising.

Race, History, and Revolution in the Year's Best Films

(A version of this article originally appeared in the New Orleans Data News Newspaper)

We live in the era of Hollywood mega-budget sequels, where theaters are filled with stories based on comic books, children’s books, or a line of toys. Originality is rarely rewarded: this year, the top five grossing films, taking in about a billion dollar each in ticket sales, were all sequels. Even among award fare, there were major disappointments. Of these, the worst was The Wolf of Wall Street. Director Martin Scorsese delivered a film that was promoted as a critique of Wall Street excesses, but ended up celebrating and glamorizing some of the world's worst people, as star Leonardo DiCaprio seemed dedicated to making rape, misogyny, greed, and robbery seem charming and humorous. 

But a few filmmakers still dared to fight the trends. The most powerful films of the year were personal visions that explored themes of racism, imperialism, prisons, and revolution. Below are ten films (and a few more) released this year that you should see if you’re sick of watching the same stories again and again.

10. The We and the I – French director Michel Gondry creats fantastical worlds that feel handmade, from the near-future of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to the love song to the end of the VHS era Be Kind Rewind. But for The We and The I, Gondry goes for realism. Working with a diverse group of New York City high school students recruited from a community center in the Bronx, the filmmaker follows a day in the life of working class youth, filled with bullying, friendships, love, and most importantly a real portrait of lives rarely seen on screen.

9. An Oversimplification of Her Beauty – In this beautiful experimental film that blends animation with fiction and documentary, director Terence Nance tells a love story between two young Black bohemian artists. Nance plays himself (or a version of himself) in the film, while the object of his affection plays herself. The two of them shape the story of a budding romance from their perspectives. Brought to theaters with the help of a-list celebrities including Jay-Z and dream hampton, the film shows that it’s still possible to tell a love story in a new way.

8. The Punk Singer – In telling the story of musician Kathleen Hanna, a founder of the Riot Grrrl movement and an important figure in 90s alternative music, director Sini Anderson captures a moment of feminist uprising and consciousness-raising. Told through archive footage, present-day interviews, and lots of music, the film captures the energy of a moment that changed popular culture.

7. Free Angela and All Political Prisoners – With stunning archival footage, filmmaker Shola Lynch brilliantly recreates the 1972 trial of Angela Davis and its context within the early Black power movement. Any audience, whether they lived through the era or were born decades later, will be gripped by this thrilling documentary. Lynch, who also directed the 2005 film Chisholm ‘72: Unbought & Unbossed, finds rare footage and photos of key moments from Angela Davis’ early lectures to Jonathan Jackson’s ill-fated attempt to free his brother George Jackson.

6. Dirty Wars – Every American should know the stories of civilians killed in our name. Filmmakers Rick Rowley, David Riker and Jeremy Scahill take audiences into the US’ hidden wars, from drone attacks to special forces operations in Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and beyond. Combining investigative reporting with thrilling filmmaking, this may be the most politically important film of the year.

5. 12 Years a Slave – British/West Indian filmmaker Steve McQueen made history with the powerful story of Solomon Northup, a free Black man kidnapped from the north and sold into slavery in Louisiana in 1841. McQueen never shies away from showing the torture and cruelty of American slavery, and has created a modern classic that makes clear the legacy of white supremacy in this nation. Appearing in nearly every minute of the film, Chiwetel Ejiofor is riveting.

4. Her – Director Spike Jonze is the most original filmmaker in the US. Through his films, he creates worlds that are at once totally different from our world, and also deeply connected. With Her, the director of Being John Malkovich and Adaptation brings us a world that seems five minutes in our future, and also deeply connected to fundamental human truths about love, jealousy, desire, polyamory, and trust.

3. Upstream Color – Multi-talented (and perhaps obsessive) filmmaker Shane Carruth wrote, directed, produced, cast the actors, filmed, acted, edited, composed the music, and distributed this film. While having a crew to collaborate with might help other filmmakers, Carruth seems to thrive on control. In his second film (after Primer, a 2004 low-budget science fiction mindbender), he creates a beautiful mystery about memory, love, madness, addiction and loss that demands to be seen multiple times to unravel its secrets.

2. Something in the Air  - 1968 was a time of global revolutionary uprising, and Olivier Assayas beautiful film captures the moment in the lives of a group of anarchic French youth living at the barricades, fighting authority while also deciding what direction their lives will take. Assayas, who also directed 2010’s Carlos, a recreation of the life of controversial armed fighter Carlos the Jackal, (a revolutionary-to-some and terrorist-to-others), has created a film that feels as fresh and alive as the protests still gripping the world, from Tunisia to Brazil.

1. Fruitvale Station –Henry Glover, James Brissette, Ronald Madison, Adolph Grimes III, Raymond Robair, Kim Groves, Justin Sipp, Wendell Allen…The names of the young Black men and women killed by police goes on and on. But Hollywood and our media rarely explore these lives cut short by violence. By telling the story of Oscar Grant, a young man killed by transit officers on New Year’s Day 2009, first-time filmmaker Ryan Coogler and rising star Michael B. Jordan give weight to a life that was brutally cut short.

Even in this new era of digital distribution, from Netflix to Amazon, it's still hard for truly independent voices to be heard. Two of the best films I saw this year haven’t yet gotten US distribution. When I Saw You is a brilliant film by director Annemarie Jacir about a young boy displaced along with his mother from Palestine in 1967. Capturing both the pain of refugees and the steadfastness of liberation fighters, the film is a stunning accomplishment and needs to be seen widely. It's the best film I saw in 2013. I'm hoping it will gain distribution in 2014, so I can add it to my official top ten list next year. 

Bayou Maharajah is filmmaker Lily Keber’s loving and thorough documentary about the man who has been called “the best Black, gay, one-eyed junkie piano genius New Orleans has ever produced.” The film is a gift for those that love New Orleans music, and a revelation for those less familiar. A brilliant film that I hope will be seen in theaters across the US in the coming year.

Some other great films that nearly made the list: David Riker (co-writer of Dirty Wars) also released The Girl, a film about the relationship that develops between a white girl in her 20s from south Texas and a young Mexican girl who’s mother died while attempting to cross the border. Stephen Vittoria’s film Long Distance Revolutionary, about imprisoned freedom fighter Mumia Abu-Jamal, explores the context of Abu-Jamal’s life through an all-star cast of interviews that includes Ruby Dee, Dick Gregory, Giancarlo Esposito, Cornel West, Alice Walker, Pam Africa, and many others. Blackfish is a moving expose of animal cruelty at Sea World amusement parks. Act of Killing is a devastating documentary about Indonesian torturers and killers who remain free from consequences for their actions. Side Effects is a smart and original conspiracy-thriller from director Steven Soderbergh. Gimme the Loot is a disarmingly sweet tale of two youths and a dream involving the best graffiti tag a New York kid could imagine. Park Chan-wook's film Oldboy was faithfully remade by Spike Lee this year, but the Korean director also made his English language debut with the disturbing Stoker, a dark thriller about murder and sex. Park's new film is better than Lee's remake. Fans of Danai Gurira (who plays Michonne in the show The Walking Dead) saw a more vulnerable side to the actor in her starring role in Andrew Dosunmu's Mother of George, a heartbreaking and visually powerful drama about Nigerian immigrants living in Brooklyn. Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity melds great storytelling with the latest in filmmaking technology.

There were too many excellent performances to mention here - many already mentioned above, such as Chiwetel Ejiofor's powerful lead performance. Among the big Hollywood award winners, American Hustle featured some of the best acting and design of the year, as it vividly recreated its late 70s/early 80s era in director David O. Russel's based-on-truth story of small time hustlers becoming entangled in a involving with the FBI, the mafia and several high-ranking politicians. Christian Bale (who costarred with Jennifer Lawrence, Amy Adams, and Bradley Cooper) once again proved he is one of the most versatile actors alive, bringing the scent of desperation and sleaze to his character. Bale also starred in Scott Cooper's Out of The Furnace, an under-recognized film about white working class despair in the Rust Belt. The film also features Casey Affleck, whose burning hopelessness gives the film its power. Affleck also brought this despair and sadness to another of the year's best performances, as a Clyde Barrow-type trying to reunite with a woman he loves in David Lowery's Ain't Them Bodies Saints. Director Denis Villeneuve, whose 2010 film Incendies was among my favorite films of the decade, brought to life a drama about violence and obsession n the film Prisoners. Hugh Jackman, Viola Davis, Melissa Leo, Paul Dano and Jake Gyllenhaal gave some of their best work in this brutal film.

Not enough international films see distribution in the US, but among those that did were several classics. Cristian Mungiu's Beyond The Hills is an immersive drama of two young women caught between desire and the lives forced on them by class, social pressure, and religion. Cannes award winner Blue Is the Warmest Color also explores a relationship between two young women, but in a graphic, intimate and intense form that divided critics and audiences. Angels’ Share is a working class Scottish comedy from socialist filmmaker Ken Loach. The Grandmaster, combines the stunningly beautiful imagery Honk Kong auteur Wong Kar Wai is known for with an epic action film. After years of exploring love and desire in his films, The Grandmaster in some ways is a more mature return to 1994's Ashes of Time, one of the director's first films.

Finally, this year saw two truly bizarre but unforgettable films see relatively wide release. Spring Breakers is a delirious and deranged exploitation film starring James Franco and former Disney starlets Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens and directed by experimental filmmaker Harmony Korine. Depending on your taste, it's either the year's strangest film or the worst. I choose strangest. Also deeply weird is cult filmmaker Don Coscarelli's John Dies At The End, a surreal supernatural horror comedy thriller that is never predictable and often hilarious.

The only way for these films to continue to get made and seen is for viewers to support them. For every Thor or Iron Man you see, make the time for films that challenge the status quo.

New Orleans Film About James Booker Sets SXSW Festival on Fire

Bayou Maharajah Trailer from Lily Keber on Vimeo.

New Orleans filmmaker Lily Keber's film Bayou Maharajah, about James Booker, "the best black, gay, one-eyed junkie piano genius New Orleans has ever produced," premiered this week at SXSW film festival in Austin Texas, and has already been generating excitement.

The trailer for the film was featured on RollingStone.com. The film’s poster debuted on IndieWire. The Hollywood Reporter named the film the #1 Must See Music Movie of SXSW 2013. PASTE Magazine called Bayou Maharajah the #2 Must See Movie at SXSW. Billboard Magazine mentioned Bayou Maharajah in three separate articles, including an extensive profile featuring interviews with Harry Connick, Jr., Joe Boyd, Scott Billington, Don Williams, and director Lily Keber. Variety Magazine listed the film first in their Searching For The Next Sugarman article and featured a picture from the film as the headlining photograph. Out Magazine listed Bayou Maharajah as the top Most Notable LGBT film to see at SXSW and featured a still from the film as the headlining photograph. A longer article for Rolling Stone followed.

Interviews with Director/Producer Lily Keber were featured on Austin Fox-7’s Morning News Show, KOOP’s Writing On The Air, efilmcritic.com, nola.com, and OffBeat Magazine. The Austin-American Statesman called the film “ecstatic, sorrowful, beautiful, pained, full of anger, joy and something otherworldly.”

Bayou Maharajah has also been profiled on NPR’s Weekend Edition, NOLA Defender, The Vinyl District, Larry Blumenfeld’s Blu Notes, Sal Nunziato’s Burning Wood blog, Alex Rawl’s My Spilt Milk. Roger Ebert has tweeted about Bayou Maharajah twice.

It's always exciting when New Orleans culture receives some of the international recognition it deserves.

Food Justice Event This Thursday in New Orleans

From our friends at Survivors Village and Malcolm X Grassroots Movement:

Join Survivors Village, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, the Alberto Lovera Bolivarian Circle, and the New Orleans Consulate of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela for this critical program about the struggle for food sovereignty in Venezuela and lessons that can be learned and applied in the struggle for food sovereignty in oppressed and exploited communities within the United States.

Growing Change is a documentary that looks at one of the most exciting experiments in the world to grow a fair and sustainable food system. In Venezuela, from fishing villages to cacao plantations to urban gardens, a growing social movement is showing what’s possible when communities, not corporations, start to take control of food.



Guest Speakers include:
Kali Akuno, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement
William Camacaro, Alberto Lovera Bolivarian Circle
Jorge Guerrero Veloz, Consul General of New Orleans

Growing Change: the Struggle for Food Sovereignty in Venezuela
Thursday, November 15th, 7:00pm
St. Bernard Community Baptist Church
3938 St. Bernard Ave.

New Orleans Filmmakers Win Major Award at Cannes Film Festival

Beasts of the Southern Wild, the remarkable film by a collective of New Orleans filmmakers calling themselves Court 13, won the Caméra d’Or today at the Cannes Film Festival. The award, which recognizes the best film by a first-time filmmaker, is one of the most prestigious honors in the world of cinema

The film already caused a sensation at this year's Sundance Film Festival, winning the Grand Jury Prize and rave reviews from critics. The Hollywood Reporter's Todd McCarthy, one of the most influential film critics in the US, gave Beasts a rave review at its premiere at Sundance this January:

One of the most striking films ever to debut at the Sundance Film Festival, Beasts of the Southern Wild is a poetic evocation of an endangered way of life and a surging paean to human resilience and self-reliance. Shot along the southernmost fringes of Louisiana, cast with nonactors and absolutely teeming with creativity in every aspect of its being, Benh Zeitlin’s directorial debut could serve as a poster child for everything American independent cinema aspires to be but so seldom is. A handcrafted look at the struggles of some of the poorest people in the United States is no prescription for commercial success, but the presence of a dynamite little girl at the center of things could, along with critical praise and enlightened handling, push this most unlikely but entirely elating drama into a successful specialized theatrical release.

Sundance (which focuses mostly on US filmmakers) and Cannes (which deliberately spreads its gaze around the world) have notoriously different tastes. Because each festival prefers to only feature world premieres, it is rare for a film to even be selected for both. Beasts is only the second film to have ever won both the Caméra d’Or and Sundance's Grand Jury Prize - the previous was 1998's Slam, starring Saul Williams. Among the small circle of other films that have been acclaimed at both fests are Me and You and Everyone We Know, which won a Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision at Sundance before going on to win the Caméra d’Or at Cannes, and 1989's sex, lies and videotape, which helped establish Sundance as an important festival when it won an Audience Award in 1989, before going on to win Cannes' Palme d’Or, the top prize at that fest, and then becoming a surprise box office success.

Steven Soderbergh, the director of sex lies and videotape, also has a local connection, having grown up mostly in Baton Rouge.

Variety, the insider journal of the film industry, has already named Beasts director Benh Zeitlin one of ten directors to watch. At Cannes, Beasts was also honored by The International Federation of Film Critics, which gave the film its Un Certain Regard prize, one of three awards it gives out. Fox Searchlight paid a reported two million dollars for the distribution rights to Beasts, and are releasing it next month.

New Orleans Filmmakers Are Hit of Sundance With Film "Beasts Of The Southern Wild"

A new film by a collective of filmmakers based in New Orleans has emerged as one of the major success stories at this year's Sundance Film Festival with their new film that shines a light on the issues faced on Louisiana's Gulf Coast.

Variety, the insider journal of the film industry, has named director Benh Zeitlin one of ten directors to watch, while the film industry website indywire reports that film companies have started a bidding war over his new film, Beasts Of The Southern Wild, which reportedly received a standing ovation after its Sundance premiere. The Hollywood Reporter has already called it "one of the most striking films ever to debut at the Sundance Film Festival." According to Indywire:

After its immensely successful premier at the ongoing Sundance Film Festival - a debut that was met with a standing ovation and lots of applause at its end, for both the film and the director - several distribution companies have been circling the film with great interest.

It was just announced that Fox Searchlight is emerging to be the company with the most attractive proposal, whatever that is, and is in "active talks" to acquire Benh Zeitlin's feature film debut, the beautiful, whimsical and tragic Beasts of the Southern Wild. Variety reports that no deal is yet in place, but multiple sources privy to the negotiations say that Fox Searchlight is fully committed to "bagging" the film by any means necessary, and will close on a deal soon.

Other companies that were in the mix include Sony Pictures Classics, Focus Features, and The Weinstein Company. So let's see how this all shakes out; I suppose an announcement will come sooner than later; unless talks with Fox Searchlight fall apart for whatever reason.

Zeitlin's previous work includes the film Glory At Sea, which received the best short film award at the 2008 PATOIS Film Festival and the New Orleans Film Festival.While Glory At Sea movingly - and elliptically - dealt with post-Katrina themes, Zeitlin's new film was shot on Louisiana's southern coast in the aftermath of the BP Drilling Disaster and reportedly explores life in the coastal communities, where the land is disappearing out from under their feet.

The Hollywood Reporter's Todd McCarthy, one of the most influential film critics in the US, calls the film "Everything American independent cinema aspires to be but so seldom is." Below are more excerpts from the review:

One of the most striking films ever to debut at the Sundance Film Festival, Beasts of the Southern Wild is a poetic evocation of an endangered way of life and a surging paean to human resilience and self-reliance. Shot along the southernmost fringes of Louisiana, cast with nonactors and absolutely teeming with creativity in every aspect of its being, Benh Zeitlin’s directorial debut could serve as a poster child for everything American independent cinema aspires to be but so seldom is. A handcrafted look at the struggles of some of the poorest people in the United States is no prescription for commercial success, but the presence of a dynamite little girl at the center of things could, along with critical praise and enlightened handling, push this most unlikely but entirely elating drama into a successful specialized theatrical release.

The first few minutes alone establish Zeitlin as some kind of heir to Terrence Malick in the way he makes nature register onscreen. The images of thick green flora and fauna, the wetness, the wildlife that is always “feedin’ and squirtin,’ ” in the words of young heroine, the proximity of water and land and sense of the area’s precariousness, stuck out on its own away from the mainland but within sight of a hulking industrial area, all back up 6-year-old Hushpuppy’s contention that she and her dad live in “the prettiest place on Earth.”...

Undetectably based on a play, by co-scenarist Lucy Alibar, Beasts unequivocally casts a spell, one that emanates from the strange world it inhabits and evokes, as well as from the extraordinarily sensitive and expressive way Zeitlin and his colleagues have rendered it. The director, who made a short film called Glory at Sea in 2006, assembled a sort of collective of artisans to collaborate on this feature, and what has come of it, in the way the exquisite images, fleet cutting, exotic music, vivid naturescapes, native people and local language merge so seamlessly, is a movie that pulsates with the stuff of life. It’s very much an art piece, to be sure, but it feels like a genuine one that, while meditated, speaks fluently and truly for the place, people and culture it so indelibly depicts.

New Orleans community activists gather for preview of new film on the struggle for housing

More than two hundred New Orleanians gathered together on Friday, August 28, to commemorate the struggles our communities have been through in the four years since the city was flooded. The occasion was a preview of selected scenes from the forthcoming documentary Land of Opportunity, by filmmaker Luisa Dantas.

Dantas has spent most of the past four years working on this film, which will be completed in 2010. The preview, which featured poetic narration from New Orleans spoken word artist Sunni Patterson, explored the confrontations around housing and homelessness this city has faced, from the battle over the fate of public housing to the homeless encampment outside city hall.

Among the most powerful moments were many scenes inside the now-torn-down developments, where first-hand observation disproves official claims that the housing was too damaged by the storm to be restored. Countering the claims by politicians and developers, we see residents cleaning their own apartments, accomplishing with simple cleaning supplies the task that HUD was unwilling to take on. In one memorable encounter, journalist Lolis Elie challenges a HANO spokesperson, while touring the Lafitte development. As the spokesperson claims the housing needs to be torn down, Elie points out the evidence right in front of their eyes, of mostly undamaged apartments. Urban planner Andres Duany, touring the St. Bernard development, reaches a similar conclusion.

The audience, which included a range of folks, from former public housing residents to lawyers and journalists and advocates and community residents, filled the empty lot next door to the Seventh Ward Neighborhood Center. Reaction to the film was overwhelmingly positive, although many were angered anew by the role of our public officials in tearing down these homes while the city faced a massive crisis in affordable housing. As we enter the fifth year after the storm, this crisis shows no sign of going away.

The event, which also featured music by the Big Seven Brass Band, was organized by a coalition of groups that included Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, Survivors Village, Porch 7th Ward Cultural Organization, NOLA Tenants Rights Union, JoLu Productions, STAND for Dignity, and PATOIS.