familiar
We finished watching Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke yesterday. Yes, we really do know how to liven-up a New Year’s Eve… Lee’s “Requiem in Four Acts” is primarily a first-person account by those who experienced and continue to live with the results of Katrina and the New Orleans levee failures.
It’s a draining but very powerful and emotional film and Spike Lee shows restraint as a documentary director. There are heartbreaking and even horrific narratives and visuals but the on-going story of family, race, culture, and class is told wonderfully by a wide range of New Orleans natives and those who were drawn in or gave of themselves to this.
As someone so far removed from New Orleans, the culture is often mysterious but these accounts make a powerful human story wherever you happen to be. What remains very clear is that the documentary isn’t talking about a frozen history but a living story that continues to touch thousands of people today. There is a need to tell the story of the people of Louisiana and Mississippi that continues.
Some Louisiana residents like photographer William Greiner have taken it upon themselves to keep the day-to-day impact of Katrina in people’s minds. Greiner’s blog features his powerful photos, snippets of Katrina news, and his own reactions. Scott Jackson’s blog has images from his return to New Orleans (May-June 2006 archives) where he grew up and where his family’s home was lost. There is also an effort to rebuild the studio of New Orleans photographers Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick (both featured in When the Levees Broke). Here is a New York Times story on their work.