Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola, La.
Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola, La.
What: "Serving Life," a documentary narrated by Forest Whitaker -- and produced by Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey -- about life and death at Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.

When: 8 p.m. Thursday (July 28)

Where: OWN.

Why: There have been a number of documentaries about Angola over the years, of course. (The 1998 Oscar-nominated doc "The Farm" springs to mind). But this one is different. Here, Whitaker and director Lisa Cohen take an up-close and personal look at the prison's inmate-staffed hospice program -- where hardened criminals get in touch with their softer side as they care for dying lifers.



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After winning a regional Emmy, the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities 2010 Documentary of the Film Award and being named to my year-end list of the best documentaries of 2009, "All Over But to Cry" -- about 1957's Hurricane Audrey -- has been picked up for broadcast by the Documentary Channel.


Directed by Jennifer John Block and built around incredibly personal -- and incredibly moving -- eyewitness accounts, the 49-minute film will air June 27 at 7 and 11 p.m., with rebroadcasts set for July 11 at 7 p.m. and July 27 at 5:30 p.m.

That initial air-date -- June 27 -- also happens to mark the 54th anniversary of the day the Category 4 storm slammed into the Cajun communities of southwest Louisiana, killing more than 500 people and leaving a swath of utter devastation in its wake.

"In the hands of Block and director of photography Jake Springfield," I wrote in my 2009 review of the film, "this is powerful, gripping stuff, a story worthy of Hollywood -- and can't-miss cinema for local residents."


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The Phillis Wheatley Elementary School has served the historic New Orleans African-American neighborhood of Tremé since it opened in 1955. Celebrated worldwide for its innovative, regionally-expressive modern design – the structure sustained moderate damage during the storms and levee breach of 2005. Although it is scheduled for demolition in Summer 2011, DOCOMOMO Louisiana is advocating for its restoration via adaptive reuse. A Plea For Modernism is narrated by actor Wendell Pierce (“The Wire”, “Treme”). (Evan Mather, U.S.A., 2011, 11:59)


The Phillis Wheatley Elementary School is one of many other modern design structures from all over placed on the World Monuments Watch List. If the school is demolished this summer, it will be the first site on the list that died in our hands. 

Watch the video at www.handcraftedfilms.com to see the history and value of this school to New Orleans. 
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Spike Lee covers the complexities of post-Katrina life
If God is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise
3 stars, out of 4
(Unrated, 2010)

Spike Lee's follow-up to his HBO Hurricane Katrina documentary "When the Levees Broke" -- released to mark the storm's fifth anniversary -- is an often-depressing ride. But Lee is a talented filmmaker, and, despite his attraction to controversy, he does a solid job of capturing the complexities of post-Katrina life.

Read The Times-Picayune's coverage of the New Olreans premiere of "If God is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise."

DVD extras: Director's commentary, 60-minute featurette. Running time: 4 hours.

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When Hurricane Katrina inundated New Orleans in 2005, Helen Krieger and Joseph Meissner had been living there four years, three of them together. Like many people, they fled the city and bunked with family for a while — with Meissner’s in Houston, Krieger’s in Wisconsin.Recovering and contemplating their lives after the storm, they decided to change things up a bit. Pursue new adventures. Learn new skills. “My philosophy was: Let’s do things that in the normal course of our lives we wouldn’t have the opportunity to do,” Meissner said. “So we went into a sensory deprivation chamber for the first time. ... And we went to a wilderness survival camp. Another thing we did, I went and got certified in lifting Russian kettle bells.”

Oh, and one more thing: They made a movie. Flood Streets, it’s called, and it’s based on a collection of stories Krieger set in New Orleans (In the Land of What Now). Written and produced by Krieger, directed by Meissner (who also stars), the film will premiere at 7 p.m. Monday at Houston’s 44th Annual WorldFest, with a question-and-answer session to follow with the filmmakers. It’s also been selected for the 2011 Boston International Film Festival, where it’s set to screen April 23.

“We didn’t know what we had to come back to. We thought, here we may have an opportunity to start totally over from scratch — do whatever we want with our lives and just start from the beginning,” said Meissner, a Houston native and graduate of Bellaire High School. He should focus more on his acting career, they decided. She should focus more on her writing. In making their own film, they could do both.

So they sold their house, moved into Meissner’s martial-arts school and used the money to finance the movie. They bought a pair of Panasonic digital cameras and shot each scene from two angles, assuring that good moments wouldn’t be lost to a first-time director. “I don’t know all that much about lenses and lights and f-stops and things like that, so I really wanted to capture lightning in a bottle in terms of performances,” he said.

An ensemble piece with intersecting story lines, homegrown music and a gently oddball vibe, Flood Streets follows an assortment of characters scrabbling through the post-Katrina landscape: Matt (Meissner) and Liz (Melissa Hall), a writer and artist renovating their home; Georgia (Asia Rainey), a single mom with a risqué second life and a gloriously singing daughter (Rachel Dupard); and Madeline (alt-folk-rocker Becky Stark), a real estate agent who visits abandoned homes and bumps into Ruby (Ursaline Bryant), a dying squatter who shares her stash of pot.

Much of the plot is based on Krieger’s own experiences in New Orleans, both pre- and post-Katrina. She toured many “crazy houses” during a brief gig in real estate, but the parallels don’t end there. “Lots of the characters are based on me,” she said. “Even Matt is a version of Helen. And Matt’s girlfriend is a version of Helen.” In one of the movie’s funniest bits, Matt has his teeth fixed (or not) by a chesty dental student who leans over his face until her cleavage just about straddles his nose. That happened, in real life, to Krieger. (You might recognize the cranky supervising dentist, This Is Spinal Tap’s Harry Shearer.)

Flood Streets is dotted with incidental wit and wry observations of life in the Big Easy, which isn’t always. “No matter how bad a thing happens to people in New Orleans, they have a sense of humor about it,” Krieger said. “About six weeks after the storm, everyone came out. There was still the National Guard on the streets with their automatic rifles and Humvees, and these throngs of people and costumes came by.” The message was loud and clear: “‘Now we’re going to have fun.’”

That unsinkable spirit comes through in the movie’s soundtrack, which runs all the way from klezmer (Panorama Jazz Band) and eclectic Russian (Debauche) to modern gospel (Dupard), alternative Irish-Cajun-punk (the Zydepunks), airy indie folk (Stark) and — finally, inevitably — the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

“New Orleans has this really diverse music scene, but nationally, what gets all the attention is traditional jazz,” Meissner said. “I really feel strongly that culture is a living and evolving thing, and if it ever stops evolving and gets put into a museum, it dies.” In his view, the film’s musical gumbo reflects the collaborative nature of young people who move to the city and mix it up with native art forms.

That vibrancy first drew Meissner and Krieger there 10 years ago, and it’s what they aimed to capture in Flood Streets. Their hopes for the movie include more festivals and, down the line, a distributor. If they don’t land one, they’ll distribute the film themselves. In the meantime, they’re planning their next project, which Kreiger described as “a kind of edgy sex-and-drugs comedy” based on a novel she wrote after a yearlong stint in journalism.

And yes, they said, they work together just fine as a couple.

“It can get pretty thick sometimes,” Krieger said. “You need space ... but I think it’s just a matter of finding that balance.”

amy.biancolli@chron.com

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Kelsey Robinson and Stephanie Mathena
When Kelsey Robinson was a sophomore in high school, her seemingly normal life was forced in an unexpected direction. One day she was going to school, and the next, she was being evacuated to Atlanta along with the rest of her family.

One of the most destructive hurricanes in U.S. history was headed for her hometown of New Orleans. It was during her sophomore year that Hurricane Katrina, of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, caused approximately $125 billion worth of damages, according to Risk Management Solutions, an American firm that specializes in disaster risk assessment. The same hurricane was responsible for taking roughly 1,900 lives, as well.

This NKU student’s personal experience with Hurricane Katrina, coupled with classmate Stephanie Mathena’s knowledge and love of documentaries, made Robinson and Mathena an ideal pair for their final Honor’s Capstone project.

When Robinson was finally able to return to New Orleans after being away for a month, her family made the decision to move to Louisville where her father had acquired a new job.

“Many of my family members’ homes were affected, and some of my friends’ homes were totally destroyed,” Robinson said.

She admits that if it had not been for Hurricane Katrina, she and her family would most likely still be living in New Orleans.

When Robinson, now a junior criminal justice major, came to NKU in 2008, she met Mathena. The two shared an honors class and Robinson discovered that Mathena, now a junior electronic media & broadcasting major, had a passion for film and documentary creation. Mathena (who founded NKU’s Norse Film Society in 2008) and Robinson (who is also a member of the organization) will use their experience with film to help others.

The pair became immediate friends as they decided to focus their Capstone project on bringing volunteer service to the people of New Orleans.

Robinson and Mathena began creating their plans at the start of spring semester 2011. They have assembled a group of eight NKU students that has agreed to travel to New Orleans from June 19-25 to film a documentary and aid in various rebuilding efforts.

The group plans to distribute their final documentary to other area nonprofit groups and organizations to show the people of Northern Kentucky and surrounding areas the impact of volunteering.

“Instead of just doing a research paper for our Capstone project, we wanted to do something that made an impact — something that we could physically show everyone,” Mathena said.

Mathena previously visited New Orleans with a church group in 2006 and again in 2008, where she and her fellow church members worked with Operation Nehemiah, a nonprofit group that aims to help families affected by the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

Robinson, Mathena and their NKU volunteers will once again partner with Operation Nehemiah to tear down damaged houses and provide food to those left homeless by the hurricane.

There is still a lot of work to do in New Orleans.

“When you see the media coverage of a disaster, you don’t really understand the extent of it, and you can’t comprehend it until you see it for yourself,” Mathena said. In 2008, Mathena saw the remnants of New Orleans beginning to come back together as the city was rebuilt.

“There were still a lot of houses everywhere that needed to be cleared out,” she said. “They would mark ‘X’s on the outside of the destroyed houses to represent the number of people who had died.”

It is Robinson and Mathena’s hope that by volunteering and creating a documentary of their efforts, other students and community members will be inspired to do the same.

For Robinson, the best part of their Capstone project: “For me, it’s being able to go down to New Orleans and help rebuild the city I’ve spent most of my life in. I am so happy to have the opportunity to help my former New Orleanians make the city the way it used to be.”


Source: http://www.thenortherner.com/?p=9334
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