Library Journal, December 2006

The Katrina Experience comprises several films from various filmmakers. What happens when almost 600 African Americans from the steamy South are airlifted without their knowledge to a cold Western state with very few black residents? The answer is the basis for Alex LeMay’s Desert Bayou, a fascinating cultural experiment with Katrina evacuees sent to live in Utah. Interviews paint a picture in which race, religion, and politics clash in unique ways. This reviewer found Laszlo Fulop and Wickes Helmboldt’s Tim’s Island to be the most interesting film in the series whereby a team of documentary filmmakers living in New Orleans relate what happened when they took refuge in their friend Tim’s loft in an old dairy during and after Katrina. A total of 16 people, seven dogs, and eight cats comprised this makeshift community, and their interactions as they manage their new lives for ten days before being rescued are a sociological wonder.

Among the greatest treasures of New Orleans is its rich and lively musical heritage. The community of musicians suffered a major blow as their homes and also the venues in which they performed were destroyed. Robert Mugge’s New Orleans Music in Exile follows their account of survival and renewal as they try to rebuild their lives and restore the New Orleans music scene. An Eye in the Storm, by Neil Alexander, offers up incredible home video and first-person accounts, while Paola Mendoza’s Still Standing takes us away from New Orleans to look at the destruction of the filmmaker’s grandmother’s house in Waveland, MS. New Orleans Furlough, by Amir Bar-Lev, examines how the storm affected the life of a member of the National Guard who returns from Iraq to cope with the tragedy. While most press coverage was given to the city of New Orleans itself, Adam Finberg’s After Katrina: Rebuilding St. Bernard Parish follows the devastation in one suburban community that suffered even greater devastation and faces a worse struggle to rebuild. The Katrina Experience is an incredibly rewarding series. The variety of perspectives and filmmaker styles will be of value to anyone wanting a greater understanding of these events. Highly recommended for all types of libraries.

--Tom Budlong, Atlanta, Georgia

Films in Review, December 2006

A GATHERING OF KATRINA DOCS
by Roy Frumkes

THE KATRINA EXPERIENCE: THE POWER OF CULTURE TO HEAL
Four discs containing seven films, ranging from shorts to features, by indie filmmakers, giving us a kind of holographic look at the effects of Katrina.

I’ve saved my editorializing for almost last. The Katrina tragedy lingers in our national psyche. I spent four wonderful years in New Orleans, back in the 60s, back at the tail end of its glory. In the decades since, I’ve visited the city periodically, and witnessed it’s slide into disrepair. Once I went down with my writing partner, Rocco Simonelli – his first visit - and as we drove around the city, he commented, “I wouldn’t want to be a house painter in this burg.” Nowhere did we see any signs of renovation, of money being spent on upkeep. Yeah, the levees broke a long time ago; we just didn’t notice it till the hurricane swept through.

Earlier this year Spike Lee made a 4-hr documentary elegy about what went down in the hurricane’s wake. He achieved what he wanted to say, yet for all his dedication to the socio-political ramifications of the event, I still felt a sense of bias in his gathering of footage, and in his editorial decisions (and where, I wondered, were Irma Thomas and Fats Domino in this epic, except in the ironic use of Domino’s “I’m walkin’ to New Orleans”). For Spike, and many, many others, the city was neglected after Katrina because of its Black demographic. Well…I understand the concept, and certainly in part it’s true, but there’s a bigger issue, and that’s New Orleans itself. Not only one of the most unique cities in America, New Orleans was one of the most unique cities in the world. Two entire cultures – the Cajuns and the Creoles – evolved there (where was the coverage of Cajun bayou devastation in WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE?) Jazz. The Architecture. Voodoo. It goes on and on, and now it’s all lost – forever. Sure, they may, as an afterthought to fifty years of deconstruction, rebuild the place, but I still feel no differently than I did a year ago; rebuilt, New Orleans is going to be another South Street Sea Port -- just a fake replica of a once-real thing.

And has there been any coverage of all the corpses washing out of the graveyards into the water supply and into the streets and yards? I guess that would have been just too raunchy a notion to dredge up if they wanted tourism to return. The administration should be ashamed, but I’m afraid New Orleans is way down on their list of shameful behavior.

However, there’s been no dearth of documentary work that holds Katrina up to scrutiny. A& E has included on its three-disc collection on Hurricanes. IMAX actually happened to be in the vicinity when the hurricane rolled into town, and they altered the form of the docu-drama they were creating to make Katrina its focal point. That’s not on DVD yet, but when it is, the brief footage we see is breathtaking, though the narrative thread, of a Cajun girl singer worried about her grandfather, has the sugary IMAX formula ring to it.
The best package of Katrina perspectives available is THE KATRINA EXPERIENCE, produced by Full Frame. Four discs house seven documentaries by very different filmmakers, and one gets a holographic view of things here, perhaps more than in any other coverage we’ve been allowed access to. Here are just a few of them:
1) NEW ORLEANS: MUSIC IN EXILE - 112 mins. - This is the one I immediately glommed onto. And finally I got to see Irma Thomas, one of the great New Orleans jazz singers. I’d heard she was out of town when it hit, but we get to see her survey the damage to her nightclub, The Lion’s Den, and then see her in concert years earlier. What an effortlessly gorgeous voice. And so it goes with several groups and solo performers – including Dr. John, The Iguanas, Marcia Ball - reflecting the loss, pain, and still-passionate talent which has been aimed for a while at the restoration of their beloved city. A bit meandering despite its theme, it is nonetheless a beautifully shot film (more evocative of each place where the musicians perform, for example, than DREAMGIRLS), no surprise when the credits reveal that one of the two cameramen was David Sperling. The director was Robert Mugge. 2) DESERT BAYOU – 76 mins, although it clocked in at 74 minutes on my player - This is a fascinating study of the 600 Katrina refugees who got on a plane not knowing where they were headed, and ended up in ‘all white’ Utah. Out of this scenario, we learn a lot about the godforsaken economy of Black New Orleans, the attitudes of the Mormans towards Blacks, and the dilemma of two families the film focuses on – whether to return to the city of their friends and their color, or to attempt to forge a living in an alien land. A combustible Rabbi (though he doesn’t know it) figures into the equation, as does the head of the military installation where the families were isolated under curfew. It was directed by Alex LeMay

Of the other five, four are much shorter and appear on one disc. They cover every point of view from those of stranded survivors to a National Guardsman newly returned from Iraq…to discover Katrina.

Association of College & Research Libraries, December 2006

The Katrina Experience, curated by Nancy Buirski, (four DVDs, September 2006), consists of three feature-length documentary films and four shorts that were shown at the 2006 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, North Carolina. A special package put together specifically for academic, public, and school libraries, these films reach beyond the news to explore Katrina’s deep impact on the people of the Gulf Coast. New Orleans Music in Exile (112 minutes, Robert Mugge) follows musicians Irma Thomas, Dr. John, Cyril Neville, and others to temporary gigs outside New Orleans and lets them tell of Katrina’s devastating effect on regional music. In Desert Bayou (76 minutes, Alex LeMay), 600 African Americans evacuated to Salt Lake City adjust to new surroundings as their all-white neighbors confront their own fears. Tim’s Island (85 minutes, Laszlo Fulop and Wickes Helmboldt) shows what happened to 16 young hipsters, eight cats, and seven dogs who decided to sit out the storm in a two-story loft and watched it become a “Mad Max post-apocalyptic fortress.” An Eye in the Storm (20 minutes, Neil Alexander) is an excellent video diary of Katrina and its aftermath. Still Standing (7 minutes, Paola Mendoza) documents a visit with the filmmaker’s Colombian immigrant grandmother in Waveland, Mississippi, whose home was flattened and who must deal with the tragedy alone and speaking no English. After Katrina: Rebuilding St. Bernard Parish (22 minutes, Adam Finberg) reveals the lack of rebuilding in this working-class parish southeast of New Orleans, devastated not only by the storm but by bureaucracy. New Orleans Furlough describes the emotional trauma of a Louisiana National Guardsman who returns home from Iraq ready to help but plunges into a dysfunctional miasma of instability. A top-notch documentary collection.

--George M. Eberhart