Living Ind

Katrina, Remembered

by Mary Tutwiler

New books and documentaries recall the storm and its aftermath.

Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2010
Written by Mary Tutwiler

For those of us in the Bayou State, time is divided into two epochs: Pre-Katrina and Post-Katrina. At times it seems so long ago, but just the slightest whiff, be it the stench of overripe garbage or the ominous stir of air that signals a tropical storm, and all the memories come flooding back. This Aug. 29 will mark the fifth anniversary of The Storm. Books, blogs, documentaries, TV specials, benefits, you name it, somebody's doing it to commemorate postdiluvian life in New Orleans.

Photo by Robin May

New books and documentaries recall the storm and its aftermath.

Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2010
Written by Mary Tutwiler

For those of us in the Bayou State, time is divided into two epochs: Pre-Katrina and Post-Katrina. At times it seems so long ago, but just the slightest whiff, be it the stench of overripe garbage or the ominous stir of air that signals a tropical storm, and all the memories come flooding back. This Aug. 29 will mark the fifth anniversary of The Storm. Books, blogs, documentaries, TV specials, benefits, you name it, somebody's doing it to commemorate postdiluvian life in New Orleans.

Here's a few notable items we've compiled to get you through storm season:

Before (During) After: Louisiana Photographers' Visual Reactions to Hurricane Katrina.

Before During After is a visual and literary narrative of how Hurricane Katrina transformed the lives and work of 12 photographers from southeast Louisiana. The book explores the changes in subject matter, media and technique from the work created before the storm to after. Native New Orleanian and artist Elizabeth Kleinveld, who developed the book with Tom Varisco, found that the best way to deal with the destruction of Katrina was through her art. "Personally, photographing the destruction was a way for me to take in the affronts to the senses and to sensibility. It was a way for me to contend with the devastation and to distance myself from reality so that I could bear it just a little more."  In addition to Kleinveld, the other photographers include: Eric Julien, Rowan Metzner, David Rae Morris, Tom Neff, Sam Portera, Frank Relle, Jen Shaw, Mark Sindler, Zack Smith, Jonathan Traviesa and Lori Waselchuck.

New Orleans Rising: a documentary
by Soledad O'Brien.

The film chronicles efforts to rebuild Pontchartrain Park, a middle class African-American community founded during segregation in the 1950s. Amid moving interviews with longtime neighborhood residents as they struggle to rebuild, the documentary focuses on actor Wendell Pierce (Treme), who assumed leadership of the Pontchartrain Park Community Development Corporation. Music was created for the film by Terence Blanchard.

A Howling in the Wires: An Anthology of Writings from Postdiluvian New Orleans.

This book is a compilation of Internet-based bloggers, who were writing powerfully in the months after the storm, interspersed with the work of more traditional writers. Contributors include cookbook author and travel-and-sailing writer Troy Gilbert, poet Valentine Pierce, Professor Jerry Ward of Dillard University, poet/playwright Raymond "Moose" Jackson and former Independent cartoonist Greg Peters.

If God is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise,
a documentary by Spike Lee.

This is Spike Lee's follow-up to his 2006 documentary, When the Levees Broke. The earlier film was a hugely moving portrait of the people of New Orleans, who suffered and persevered in their attempts to rebuild and to remain in their beloved city. The new film revisits many of the people from Levees. Other segments of the four-hour documentary cover the New Orleans Saints Superbowl victory, the struggle to recreate a better public housing and public school system, crime, the Make It Right Foundation's efforts to rebuild the Lower 9th Ward and the BP oil spill.

The Big Uneasy

Humorist Harry Shearer may seem like an unlikely source for a controversial new documentary examining the government's negligence and culpability in the disaster that was Hurricane Katrina, but that's only if you don't really know Harry Shearer.

Best known as the voice of several Simpsons characters and the bassist for mock-umentary band Spinal Tap, Shearer also is a diehard New Orleanian and the politically astute host of the weekly radio program Le Show. His film, The Big Uneasy, is being released for one-night-only showings across the country on Aug. 30, the day after the fifth anniversary of Katrina. The film will be shown locally at The Grand 16. According to its website, "The Big Uneasy marks the beginning of the end of five years of ignorance about what happened to one of our nation's most treasured cities - and serves as a stark reminder that the same agency that failed to protect New Orleans still exists in other cities across America."

Before (During) After is issued by University of New Orleans Press; the four-color, softbound publication is $24.95

New Orleans Rising airs at 7 p.m., Aug. 21, on CNN.

A Howling in the Wires, Paperback: 160 Pages, Gallatin & Toulouse Press. Inquiries to: [email protected]. (504) 324-6551. Available direct from the publisher Aug. 20, 2010.

If God is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise airs at 8 p.m., in two parts on Aug. 23 and 24 on HBO.

The Big Uneasy will be screened Aug. 30 at The Grand 16 in Lafayette; as of press deadline, show times had not been set.