Selected Film & Video Works

Isle of Memories: Stories of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw
category: culture

The Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe from Isle de Jean Charles (Louisiana) has been identified by the New York Times as the first “climate refugees” in the Lower 48 states. They don’t quite feel that way! This film explores the deeply rooted traditions and lifestyle of the Tribe and the many crises they face, while showcasing the reciprocal value of their academic relationship with the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Dr. Heather Stone, Assistant Professor of Education at ULL, has worked with the Tribe to create a virtual reality repository of their history of ancestry, place, land loss, and more as a resource for education and future generations. Through these first-hand accounts, other communities will be able to learn from those who have experienced the loss of their ancestral land and the ways of life that have been vanishing.

Eternal Flow
category: environmental

What did you think you know about the Mississippi River? For those who live on, in and next to it, does it flow through their lives differently? What does it communicate to and through them? Based on ideas of the flaneur (Baudelaire), dérive´and psychogeography (Guy Debord), and Agnes Varda’s films, the Mississippi River is considered through the lens of people for whom the River is meaningful in their everyday lives. It flows through their work and reflects on their faces in these raw interviews.

Eternal Flow premiered at River Fest during the week of October 23rd, 2021.

Presentation version: https://vimeo.com/740871834

 

The River Flows Through Us
category: environmental

Artist and poet Malaika Favorite grew up in Geismar, La., the heart of the chemical refinery and sugar cane corridor between New Orleans and Baton Rouge on the Mississippi River. This is a short presentation of one of her River centered poems, spoken by her.

Finding Common Ground
category: environmental

Communicating about Louisiana’s environment, its deterioration and how to fix it. Residents, Fishermen, Politicians, Scientists, and Non-Profit leaders all have something to say. Do they hear each other and how can they effect change and get positive results?

MRGOing, Going, Gone?
category: environmental

The Mississippi River Gulf Outlet was built in the 60s as a shorter channel from the Gulf to New Orleans. But it was poorly used and maintained, never delivered on politically motivated economic promises to St. Bernard Parish, and helped to erode a land buffer next to New Orleans that helped create flooding after Hurricane Katrina. This is its story, filmed and created just before and after that great environmental disaster.

Born On The Bayou
category: environmental

Sometimes overlooked as a key economic engine of Louisiana, Bayou Lafourche is a 100 mile main street moving products, hosting America’s largest dedicated petroleum port, and providing lifeblood to generations of people. The South Lafourche Levee protects them and is historically the most successful flood protection in recent years— even in the face of the direct hit of Hurricane Ida. Meet the man responsible for building, maintaining and managing this system for the last 40 years: Windell Curole.

Caenarvon Bayou Bonjour Short
category: environmental

Much is made around the perceived benefits of fresh water diversions to build marshland. Scientist John Lopez visits land recently built as if almost by accident by the Caernarvon freshwater diversion in St. Bernard Parish

Louisiana’s Value Short
category: environmental

There are many components to Louisiana’s contribution to American and World economic. Upcoming and sometimes overlooked, this client based document shows 3: natural gas, sugar, and menhaden fish that are processed into Omega 3 supplements.

Bob Marshall’s Lost Lands of Louisiana talk
category: environmental

Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and commentator gives his own short “Bob” talk on how and why Louisiana has lost so much land even in the face of vast commerce extracted from its delta.

We Live To Eat (New Orleans)
category: culinary culture

This documentary commissioned by the Historic New Orleans Collection was finalist for the James Beard Award the highest of honors in the American culinary world. It really is a guide to New Orleans food and dishes, while mirroring the love and verve of New Orleanians who sustain its culture.

No One Ever Went Hungry (Cajun)
category: culinary culture

Cajun Food defined and viewed through the people themselves. This film was Humanities Documentary of the Year, honored by the Louisiana Endowment of the Humanities, because of its attention to detailed folk life, important derivations and evolutions of Cajun cuisine, and its exploration of the food and its relationship to the geography of Cajun Country throughout prairie and coast.

A Common Pot (Creole)
category: culinary culture

Creole cooking beyond New Orleans as it has existed since colonial times (and before it was even Creole cooking). The people of Natchitoches in northwest Louisiana have remained true to their traditions and cuisine, different from the Creoles of the city (no Italian spices, for instance) but but no less proudly performed and cooked. The food and its technique is a window to the culture— hospitable and discerning.

Lunch Money (Farmer)
category: culinary culture

African American farmer Ben Burkett and his family are key figures in theIndian Springs Farmer’s Coop of Petal, Mississippi. Ben has traveled, in his years, way beyond his farm in search of new ways to grow, crops to develop and in the process has helped the coop and mentored people all the way to the Edible Schoolyards of New Orleans. His constant search for excellence and a life/work balance before it was a fashionable term, allows him to ask for solutions to chronic dilemmas to small farmers, especially ones of color.

Jules Feiffer/ with cartoonists panel
category: culture

Take a masterful interview by writer Michael Tisserand with cartoon and filmmaking icon Jules Feiffer and see how fresh the ideas of the last decades are to contemporary anxiety. As part of the Improv Conference of New Orleans, which e/Prime has helped document and edit, Kevin McCaffrey puts together the highlights of this fascinating conversation.

Sails For Sustenance
category: culture

Filmed in Haiti as representatives from New Orleans Yacht Club and Gulf Coast Bank deliver sails to fishermen who have only paddles to get out far enough to make a difference fishing for their families. Sailboat racers on Lake Pontchartrain and the Gulf Coast have donated the sails to fishermen in Haiti they have never met. Racers use sails only for a time wearing them out for racing but not for using. Here is the 2018 giveaway a lesson in recycling as a win win for humanity and the planet.