Film

Les Vues Film Series presents ’Land of Opportunity’ Les Vues documentary asks “What kind of cities do we want to inhabit in the 21st century?”

This month’s screening will be curated by Rebecca Snedeker, who will be showing the Luisa Dantas film "Land of Opportunity" on Monday, April 24 at 6:30 p.m. Admission to the series is free, but a suggested $5 donation will go toward the cost of screening and curating costs.

Vermilionville presents the next entry in its free monthly cultural film series, Les Vues, which is held the last Monday of the month at 6:30 p.m. in their Performance Center.

The free film series is curated by filmmakers and enthusiasts, mostly from around the state and center around the curator’s interest and can range from features, documentaries, student film, shorts, animation, etc. Following the screenings will be an open discussion between the audience and the curator about the movie and how it applies on a local level.

This month’s screening will be curated by Rebecca Snedeker, who will be showing the Luisa Dantas film "Land of Opportunity" on Monday, April 24 at 6:30 p.m. Admission to the series is free, but a suggested $5 donation will go toward the cost of screening and curating costs.

ABOUT THE FILM

"Land of Opportunity" asks the question: What kind of cities do we want to inhabit in the 21st century? Through the eyes of urban planners, displaced residents, immigrant workers, developers, community activists, artists and public housing residents this question is asked, answered and asked again. But this is not just a situation that is happening somewhere else and to someone else, as the tagline points out: it’s “happening to a city near you.”

As cities all over the world struggle to recover from disaster, whether economic, natural or man-made, the filmmakers believe that the lessons of post-Katrina New Orleans have only become more urgent. They want to utilize the diverse stories they’ve captured to galvanize and educate urban America around the core urban issues of urban redevelopment, immigration, and affordable housing.

The filmmakers aim to inspire nuanced discussions and support the work of organizations that cut across single-issue frameworks to build a broad-based and multi-racial movement for urban spatial justice.

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Rebecca Snedeker is the Clark Executive Director of the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South in the School of Liberal Arts at Tulane University. Prior to this position, she worked as an independent documentary filmmaker, writer, and program curator for twenty years, cultivating a body of work that supports human rights, creative expression, and environmental justice in her native city, New Orleans.

Snedeker co-authored Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas (University of California Press, 2013), a book of 22 imaginative maps and essays, with Rebecca Solnit. She has produced several feature documentaries that take place in New Orleans and the Gulf South, including By Invitation Only (PBS, 2007), Witness: Katrina (National Geographic Channel, 2010), and Land of Opportunity (ARTE, 2010) and contributed to many others, including Faubourg Treme: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans (PBS, 2007) and A Village Called Versailles (PBS, 2008).

Snedeker serves on the Steering Committee of New Day Films, a 40-year-old, filmmaker-owned film distribution company, and formerly served on the boards of the New Orleans Film Society, Patois: The New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival, and Video Veracity.

She earned her BA degree from Wesleyan University in 1995, with honors in Studio Arts and a focus on Painting, and is the recipient of an Emmy Award for “Outstanding Historical Programming – Long Form,” and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.