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

PHAT & SWERVE AT THE HALF MOON

Phat & Swerve by the Half Moon from OPP and Vimeo.

My good friend Cat Malovic plays pool on occasion with Phat, Swerve and Jamal at their neighborhood bar, the Half Moon. Cat thought I should meet them and hear their story. They grew up in the St. Thomas project, a low-income housing project that was recently replaced by a mixed-income project, The River Garden.

The River Garden model, championed by local developer Pres Kabacoff, is being discussed in the redevelopment plans post-Katrina. Phat and Swerve live in the new River Garden project and are very positive about the change. As they say; "If this was the old St. Thomas projects, we might never be talkin' to y'all." Thanks Phat, Swerve, and Jamal for sharing your love and flavor!

HURRICANE KATRINA CAMPUS MEDIA PROJECT

This unique touring event provides deep insights into the ongoing struggles in New Orleans two years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. The immersive project is a multimedia exploration of the human situation in New Orleans seen through the lens of a changing world of independent media production, video art, and primary source journalism. 

This is a unique project. It really gives a person a sense of optimism during a time when optimism is rather tough to sustain. -- Zola Munford, curator, Langston Hughes African-American Film Festival 

 THE EVENT INCLUDES THE FOLLOWING:

Video Art Screening: Katrina Ballads/ CNN mashup: Who Are You Angry At?

This video-art installation features a looping film edited by Farrah Hoffmire combining a performance of a piece from KATRINA BALLADS with the original CNN footage that inspired the composition. 

KATRINA BALLADS, which had its world premiere at the 2007 Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, SC, is a collection of songs inspired by the tragic events surrounding Hurricane Katrina.The work uses primary-source texts to paint a rich musical portrait of that devastating and telling week in September 2005.

Using the words of flood survivors, relief workers, politicians and celebrities, New York composer Ted Hearne creates a cutting-edge musical experience and a vivid look into America’s darkest hours. Performed by Yes is a World and Charleston’s New Music Collective, the music is rhythmic, theatrical, and American to the core, possessing an edgy, post-minimalist drive and a deep jazz influence. It is a moving performance, challenging us to remember and reflect upon our own history.

This portion of the campus event includes a daylong exhibit of a video-art installation of the project with interpretive materials and an on-site curator. 

Documentary Film Screening: 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 grass-roots 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 project that will 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 top New Orleans musicians.

The film series has been featured at the:

• 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)
• ConvergeSouth Film Festival

This portion of the event includes a 75-minute screening of the film.

Documentary Film Screening: Social Dress - 730 Days After

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.

This portion of the tour presents a multi-media virtual tour of the sculpture with interpretive materials and on site curation.

Takashi's Blog

OPP Media Circus exhibit and discussion

Our relationship to mass media is immersive and constantly in flux. The Hurricane Katrina Media Tour uses art, a looping slide presentation, and during selected performances can include a presentation by Mitchell Davis and a group discussion with audiences at one of our screenings.

DR. LANCE HILL: AMERICAN CHARACTER

Dr. Lance Hill is the Executive Director of the Southern Institute for Education and Researchat Tulane University. Dr. Hill worked as a community activist and labor organizer for 20 years before embarking on an academic career.

From 1989 to 1992, Dr. Hill served as the Executive Director of the Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism (LCARN), the grass roots organization that led the opposition to former Klansman David Duke’s Senate and Gubernatorial campaigns.Hill, one of the coalition’s founders, directed the organization’s extensive television, radio and direct mail campaigns.The New York Times and the New Orleans Times-Picayune credited LCARN with playing the leading role in Duke’s ultimate political demise.

In 1993, Hill co-founded the Southern Institute for Education and Research at Tulane University. Over the past 10 years the Institute’s tolerance education program-the most comprehensive project of its kind in the South—has provided training to more than 3,600 teachers from 785 schools in the Deep South. The program uses case studies of the Holocaust and the Civil Rights Movement to teach the causes and consequences of prejudice. With a geographic scope of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and the Florida panhandle, the Institute prides itself on successful implementing programs in rural and isolated communities that have been traditional strongholds of the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups.

Dr. Hill also directs the Southern Institute’s cross-cultural communication training and research program, which teaches advanced skills to improve communication and collaboration among ethnic groups in the United States. Hill holds a PhD from Tulane University, where he has taught US History and Intercultural Communication.

His scholarly research field is the history of race relations and the radical right. He is the author of The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement(University of North Carolina Press, 2004) and "National Socialist Race Doctrine in the Political Thought of David Duke," in The Emergence of David Duke by Doug Rose (University of North Carolina Press, 1994). He has served as a consultant on several PBS documentaries on the radical right and the civil rights movement and has written extensively on racial politics in the South.

Dr. Hill resides in New Orleans with his wife of 30 years, Eileen SanJuan.

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

Lyrical Terrorist

Lyrical Terrorist from OPP and Vimeo.

“Bnjahmn” is from the 7th Ward and finds communion at Mama D’s.

Music: Bob Marley’s Zimbabwe.

BOYSIE BOLLINGER: UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY

Boysie Bollinger: A Unique Opportunity from OPP and Vimeo.

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.

Emergency Communities

emergency communities from OPP and Vimeo.

An out-take from Vignette 2 - The Art of Falling Together. Emergency Communities was started in St. Bernard Parrish. This footage is from late 2005.

EMERGENCY COMMUNITIES SUMMER 2007

 

Emergency Communities in the Lower 9 from OPP and Vimeo.

Emergency Communities is a non-profit organization that employs compassion and creativity to provide community-based disaster relief. Since Katrina, they have operated four relief sites, served over 300,000 meals and 25,000 residents of the Gulf. emergencycommunities.org

They run entirely on volunteers and donations. 

The above clip (running time aprox. 17 minutes) is from June 2007 from the Lower 9th Ward, New Orleans. Emergency Communities set up thier first relief center in St. Bernards Parish in Fall 2005 (featured in Vignette 2)

Thanks to Katie Fogle and the St. Albans Church Youth Group and Volunteers for footage that was inspiring to edit and produce. One of the most exciting things about solo journalism is letting the stories tell themselves and this is one that does that so easily. As Louise says in the video "it is hard to get people to understand, but we will see what happens...". Yes we will. Thanks to everyone who makes Emergency Communities come true.

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)

Touring with Ani DiFranco: Hurricane Katrina Media Tour

This was our first road trip with a GPS (thanks for the present mom!). Total virgins. And I have realized that a GPS is an all or nothing commitment. Otherwise you are constantly validating the robotic woman's voice with a map and all the benefit is lost. So you put your faith in the stars (literally) and just drive. I also never realized how unerving the the phrase "calculating route" can be (for non GPS'ers, that means you just took a wrong turn and are "off track" and the GPS is realigining its position on the globe. Typical suggestion: "do a legal u-turn as soon as possible". Our GPS is a Magellan, and we have developed a true love-hate relationsip with it, like any good technology. Hence the title of this blog post. Ok, enough GPS tallk...

We just finished three nights in a row with a great audience in Asheville last night. We had little in the way of expectations, but we have been able to personally talk to several hundred people about the grassroots media projects, added several dozen people to our email list, have given away a ton of cool stickers and cards spreading the OPP word and most importantly really connected with people on what we are doing. People get it!

One term that is definitely finding resonance with people is "Slow Media Movement", which is a descriptive we have been using for our projects. Bascially long term (over a year per project), self-funded, deep and immersive projects that stand in complete opposition to "fast news" of 24/7 TV culture. People seem to appreciate the perspective they can gain from a slower, more intentional approach and all of the HKMT projects do exatly that. 

We have met at least one person at every show who brings events to college campuses and was interested in the Hurricane Katrina Media Tour (HKMT). Our long term plan for the HKMT is to tour it around continually rotating in slow media and grassroots media projects. So the tour has provided the added benefit of finding people who 1) get ani difranco and 2) educate. What a powerful combination.

It has also been good to meet Buddy Wakefield (Ani's opening act and national slam poet champion - the dude is heavy...) and the other helpful people on the RBR team. Our booth is a pretty overwhelming set-up so it has been nice to de-code that for people and give them a better sense of what we are all about. Below is a quick collection of photos and thoughts.

Drive times / Cities visitied thus far:

Day One/Two: Charleston to Toronto - 21 hours. Wow! 

Day Three: Show in Toronto. Toronto Music Hall on Danforth St. A very cool venue with a great staff that made our first night go very smoothly.

We have experienced all three variations of the "booth set up" in our first three shows. Toronto falls into the "card table" category. Very nice for tight crowded spaces. We had a very busy night as the table was right next to the performance hall entrance and there was only one other tabler who was handing out newspapers for the Candian Green Party.

Most shows we can take turns and duck in for a few tunes. The soundboard was right inside the door next to our table. Ani talked about doing a "lobbying day" in Washington DC for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project. How as they visited the senators offices the aides would all ask "what did so and so say?" and that it was all quite high schoolish. That at the end of most meetings they would say "well, you know Senator so-and-so is not really that powerful, we can't really help". She told the crowd: "I was like, oh, Im sorry I thought they were a senator, that they got to vote on like laws and stuff. I must have the wrong city."

Day Four: Toronto to Boston - 9 hours Orpheum Theater in Boston, MA. Right across from the Boston Common, tucked away in an alley like it was forgotten by all the development around it. A very, very old school theatre that was good sized and intimate at the same time.

Setting up at the Orpeum. Here we had scenario 2 "sharing" - sharing a 8 foot table with another organization. There were four of us tabling: Amnesty International, Dennis Kucinich 2008 (Dennis was at the show) and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS.org).

The gentleman to Farrah's right (who we met later in the night and shared our table) is Jay Gustafaro a Gloucester fisherman who was a member of the Clamshell Alliance - the first organization in the United States to oppose commercial nuclear energy plants over thirty years ago. Jay is an amazing guy with with a real intention to what he is doing. He is involved in a project to create a book of photos from that period of activist history; so that it is not forgotten. A very important project. See the website for the project including the incredible photos. 

Day Five: Boston to Baltimore - 7 hours. Baltimore was the sweet hook up with tons of space behind the booth and a whole table to ourselves! The space was amazing (I can't believe I did not take a picture of the outside) -- a beautiful symphony hall. Met a ton of great people.

Farrah working it at the booth. She can flat pitch some slow media movement.  

Day six: Baltimore to Asheville - 9 hours. A nice corner set up. This was supposed to be a shared 8 foot table, but no one showed up to claim the other half so we floated after the doors open to a full table...nice! Again sharing some space with NIRS and some great folk who had worked on the Kucinich campaign. We had huge traffic at the table all night. 

Farrah talking about the projects. We are rotating playing the DVD's between Katrina Ballads, Social Dress New Orleans and Embedded Artist (Post Katrina Portraits). People are digging all the projects and the media circus give aways. When we have electricity we can plug in speakers (Baltimore, Asheville only so far).

Day Seven: A day off, we just have to get to Atlanta by midnight for the show tomorrow. 

-Posted by Mitchell

Farrah& Buddy Wakefield (poet extraordinaire) sporting an OPP Media Circus T!

Day 8: Atlanta - Our final show before we pass it off to Marcus & Amanda

We made it to Atlanta delirious from travel & thankful for the interesting experience of being on tour with Ani DiFranco & Buddy Wakefield. Our good friends, Beth & Joe came to the ATL show to pick up the tour materials and pass pass them off to Marcus & Amanda who finished the tour off in Durham, DC & NYC so that we could get to our documentary shoot in Costa Rica the next day! Thank you Beth, Joe, Marcus, & Amanda!!!

Kayesha (gets down with OPP) working the Amnesty Int. petitions!

Amanda preparing for the crowd in Durham

Day 10: Marcus and Amanda pick it up in Durham

Day 12: Washington, DC 

Day 14: Final Show in NYC 

Thank you Righteous Babe Records for the opportunity to connect with your loyal & intelligent fans. We met so many wonderful folk who appreciate our work, thanks & peace.