STATUS
The filmmakers spent two weeks attending carnival in February of 2006. In that time, we shot 41 hours of footage and interviewed dozens of subjects. Knowing that the New Orleans of six months after Katrina was an extremely unique time and place, we focused our attention on the unrepeatable images and moments we could only capture then – the celebrations of Mardi Gras and the state of the city’s rebuilding.
We then returned to New Orleans a few months later to conduct sit-down interviews with experts and everymen on the topics of Mardi Gras, New Orleans, and Katrina. Experts like Athur Hardy, writer of Arthur Hardy’s Mardi Gras Guide, Errol Laborde, publisher of New Orleans Magazine, Sylvester Francis, moderator of The Backstreet Cultural Museum, and Chiquita Simms, a proponent of the Atlanta-based Mardi Gras protest.
We have just finished post-production and will soon begin the festival circuit and start to seek out distribution.
SYNOPSIS
This project is a feature-length documentary examining the unique state of New Orleans as the city holds its first post-Katrina Mardi Gras. The film will not only critique the rebuilding effort of six months later and the controversy of holding carnival during that rebuilding, but also delve into the actual cultural components of Mardi Gras and how they represent New Orleans as a whole for both better and worse.
Using academic research and interviews with both experts and everymen, we hope to show America that the true Mardi Gras is a microcosm of the class, race, gender, economic, environmental, and religious issues of New Orleans society - and how understanding that unique and unfamiliar society helps to explain what occurred during Katrina and what is currently occurring in its aftermath.
And despite the seriousness of the previous two paragraphs, it’s going to be fun!
