Tribeca Fim Festival

The Tribeca Fim Festival just ended. Joseph and I went to the opening night of the festival to attend the world premiere of Faubourg Tremé, a documentary about the New Orleans neighborhood of the same name. This area is predominantly African-American, and its residents have a rich history of literary and musical accomplishment, as well as activism, dating back to before the Civil War. The film is positioned as "the untold story of Black New Orleans," and it lives up to this billing as I think everyone in the audience left the theatre having learned something new about this neighborhood.

Apparently the filmmakers had finished shooting the film and were editing it when Katrina hit. They returned to New Orleans to continue filming and wound up cutting the final film differently as a result of the storm and its aftermath.

My favorite "character" in the film was Irving Trevigne, a contractor in his 70s who was renovating the director’s house in Tremé. His grandfather edited the 1st black-owned newspaper in the South back in the 1860s. I enjoyed watching this man and hearing him speak, but he also provided the most upsetting moment of the film when we see him returning to his home weeks after Katrina and unsuccessfully trying to find valuables amidst the mold and debris.

The directors actually sat right behind me. After the screening, they did a panel with the line producer and one of the historians who appears in the film. Wynton Marsalis was one of the executive producers, and he was in attendance as well.