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Entries in levee (4)

Monday
May212012

FALLING TOGETHER IN NEW ORLEANS: A Series of Video Vignettes

The trailer for Falling Together in New Orleans

Solo Journalist-Documentary Artist, Farrah Hoffmire was inspired by grassroots organizing and volunteer efforts in the weeks and months after Hurricane Katrina. She has traveled to New Orleans numerous times to create a solo work that is part art-vignette, part documentary film and part grassroots journalism.

In stark contrast to the failure and corruption stories that have dominated mass-media coverage, Falling Together introduces us to powerful people fighting to save lives, preserve culture and bring a sense of well-being back to New Orleans. Conceived as an ongoing, subscription-based platform to follow events in New Orleans as they unfold over the next few years, it also explores the ongoing complexities of rebuilding in areas of the city still severely damaged -- such as the Lower 9th Ward.  The film features music by Ani Difranco as well as some of New Orleans’s top musicians.

The film series has been screened at the following:

  • Oral History Association national conference (Little Rock, AR)
  • Langston Hughes African American Film Festival (Seattle, WA)
  • Lake Eden Arts Festival (Asheville, NC)
  • Zeitgeist Film Series (Tulane University, New Orleans)
  • Hurricane Katrina Campus Media Project (worldwide 2007-2008)


Vignette 1: Lewis Taylor Is Always Home (released October 2006)

  • We’ll meet Lewis Taylor, an elderly gentlemen and “displaced resident” as he finds his family and visits what once was his home, a small fishing village called Boothville. Boothville sits at the tip of Louisiana’s coastline, a place where Taylor spent his whole life farming and fishing. We follow Taylor along his journey as he accepts his fate with humor and insight.

Vignette 2: The Art of Falling Together (released April 2007)

  • Witness grassroots groups, volunteers, and residents, as they rebuild threatened neighborhoods such as the Seventh and Ninth Wards immediately after hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Unlike the millions who thought about it watching the story unfold on CNN, meet the people who dropped everything and traveled to New Orleans to see how they could help. It changed some so dramatically they could not leave.

Vignette 3: Emergency Communities

  • Emergency Communities - Summer 2007 update.  Reacting shortly after the Hurricane in 2005, Emergency Communities set up the Made with Love Cafe in the devastated St. Bernarnds Parrish. OPP cameras visited EC in Winter 2005 - right after the storms and told thier amazing story in Vignette 2.  We visited EC again in the Summer of 2007 where they are still working hand in hand with the hardest hit areas of New Orleans. Now in the Lower 9th Ward, they face incredible odds but are buyoed by the altruistic efforts of volunteers and residents who treat each other as equals.

Vignette 4: Social Dress New Orleans

  • Takashi Horisaki was working 20 hour days in the 100 degree heat when Farrah found him completing an art project like none other she had ever seen. As a project to raise awareness about the situation in the Lower 9th Ward he made a replica of the surface of a shotgun-style house in latex, then taking the replica to New York's Socrates Sculpture Park. Hear about the project and see a true artist devoted to a true cause.

 

  • Music written and composed by Ani DiFranco Please visit: Righteous Babe

 

Monday
May212012

VIDEO BLOG: FALLING TOGETHER IN NEW ORLEANS

Falling Together in New Orleans Video Blog posts are snapshots of the characters and situations I encountered during the video journaling process. Some of this footage makes it through to full production, some doesn't, but it is a real-time process to give people access to what I am experiencing while I am meeting people and gathering footage.

 

 

Tuesday
May222012

BOYSIE BOLLINGER: UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY

Donald T. “Boysie” Bollinger is a member of the Bring New Orleans Back Commission, Mayor Nagin’s rebuilding committee, which is driven by the Urban Land Institute

Bollinger is also Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Bollinger Shipyards, Inc., a family-owned business established in 1946 by Boysie’s father. Bollinger Shipyards,  is a full-service marine construction and repair operation headquartered in Lockport, La., with 12 divisions in Louisiana, two divisions in Texas, and activities extending into the international market. Learn more about the Bring New Orleans Back Plan.

    Music written and composed by Michael Houser (Door Harp album). Please visit: Houser Tribute.
Tuesday
May222012

SOCIAL DRESS NEW ORLEANS - 730 DAYS AFTER

Social Dress New Orleans - 730 Days After from OPP on Vimeo 

Takashi Horisaki and a small team of volunteers were working 20-hour days in the 100-degree heat when OPP found them completing an art project in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans. Working on a largely abandoned block of the city, they worked with a mission to remind people of "what is still happening" in NOLA two years after the floods.

Takashi's ambitious media project involved the laborious process of covering the surface of the shotgun-style house in latex and cheesecloth to create a replica that itself could be "displaced" as a sculpture.

Falling Together in New Orleans: Vignette 4 looks at the process and motivations and then visits the artist and the sculpture at it's first home in New York City's Socrates Sculpture Park.

Takashi hopes to displace the sculpture across the U.S. and world to raise awareness about the still displaced people of New Orleans struggling to return home.

The film features music by Kevn Kinney. (http://www.kevnkinney.com)