At this year's Full Frame Documentary Festival, be sure to watch out for Hurricane Katrina. Every year the Durham festival features a Southern Sidebar series, which typically includes films with either southern content or southern directors. This April, it will feature the world premiere of nine films, among the first in the nation to take on the sensitive subject of Katrina.
The documentaries span a variety of topics, from the effect of the hurricane on New Orleans musicians to the individual struggle of an American soldier returning home to New Orleans from Iraq.
For some of the filmmakers, the effects of Katrina hit close to home. Neil Alexander, director of An Eye in the Storm, which documents the personal accounts of residents affected by the hurricane, was living in New Orleans when the hurricane hit.
"What I decided to do was not leave the city with my family when everyone evacuated," he said. "I've lived [in New Orleans] for 25 years as a documentary filmmaker.. I felt compelled to stay and bear witness and record the events in the city."
Robert Mugge, prominent for his music-themed documentaries and director of New Orleans Music in Exile, decided to return to the devastated city to search for the Louisiana musicians he had collaborated with in the past.
"I've developed a lot of relationships in that region," Mugge said. "Obviously knowing that a lot of these people had lost their homes, and their businesses had been uprooted by this horrible storm and by the storm which followed, I wanted to do whatever I could to help."
Not all the filmmakers had personal connections to the tragedy. Alex Lemay, director of Desert Bayou, admitted that his trip to New Orleans was motivated largely by his desire to capture such a unique and controversial situation on film.
"Every filmmaker was heading down to New Orleans," he said. "Everybody was sort of put in the same situation: Okay, we get it, it's grim, but how are we going to tell different stories?"
While these filmmakers might have gone down to New Orleans with thoughts of the trade, they were still able to expose some facet of the aftermath not previously known to the public, or to themselves. And in many cases, these individuals were deeply moved by what they saw.
LeMay said he came away from the documentary with some changes of heart. "I want to be rich and famous for making a film, but we all have ulterior motives," he said. "I learned a hard lesson making this movie, everybody has an ulterior motive and we have got to stop it.... All these great documentary makers impulsively went down to New Orleans and the story wasn't there. It was about the millions of people who were pushed aside."
Several of the filmmakers pointed out that their films were well received by the residents of New Orleans. They further claimed that their works served to fill the sudden void in attention that ensued as soon as soon as the news became old.
Marilyn Wenzel, Habitat for Humanity board member and volunteer agreed.
"The story cannot be told enough and if a documentary motivates someone to come and see with their own eyes... I believe that is a service," she said.
Mugge, who interviews the New Orleans-based musical ensemble The Iguanas in his documentary, revealed just how important the documentary was to this group and others.
"They were pleased that we found them because some of these musicians are fish out of water; they feel that they are a distance away from friends and family and the music community [that would] nourish them," Mugge said. "They feel no one is aware and they were very grateful that I found them."
Alexander also noted that people were receptive to him as a filmmaker, since he offered them an opportunity to relay their experience in a more personal and thorough fashion.
One factor that may have been beneficial in the eyes of those affected was the fact that most of the filmmakers were equipped with minimal crew and small cameras, as opposed to the camera-heavy news crews. Even so, Adam Finberg, director of After Katrina: Rebuilding St. Bernard's Parish, said the process was still delicate.
"People were angry, frustrated and probably still are," he said. "There were some people who would talk but not on camera. People feel very vulnerable. I'm chatting with people in front of their house that is totally uprooted on its side."
Regardless of whether these documentaries were shot out of philanthropic reasons or purely for the product, they will serve to illuminate an ongoing issue. At the Full Frame Documentary Festival, these films will zoom in on the disorder that afflicted and continues to afflict the residents of New Orleans, even now that all the cameras have gone.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.