trouble the water

Say what you will about the social powers of the documentary style, the fact is that most documentarians are white males. It's a sad, undemocratic fact of a medium lauded for its lofty ambitions of telling the unheard, unpopular version of things. Even in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, most of the accounts we have seen have been told from the outsider's perspective.

Trouble the Water, winner of the Grand Jury Prize for documentaries at 2008's Sundance and Full Frame film festivals, provides an alternative narrative-that of first-hand survivors. Shot partially on a commercial handheld camera, Water follows husband and wife Scott and Kimberly Roberts from before the storm to its aftermath. From the opening scenes foreshadowing the disaster to gut-wrenching footage of the Robertses shacked up in their attic with total strangers ranging in age from eight days old to 80, Water provides a never-before-seen perspective on how people survived Katrina.

Of course, the story doesn't end when the rain stopped. The Robertses roam the streets of New Orleans, documenting the harrowing stories of Katrina survivors and the racism and classism of the city, state and federal governments. Not only is each story tragic and affecting in its own right, the film as a whole is largely devoid of Caucasian storytellers.

The film, inherently political, uses smartly chosen news clips from Iraq, former FEMA director Mike Brown and President George W. Bush. As one of the film's subjects says, "There is a war going on and it's not in Iraq. It's in New Orleans."