A musical portrait of Zydeco King Clifton Chenier, who combines the pulsating rhythms of Cajun dance music and black R&B with African overtones, belting out his irresistible music in the sweaty juke joints of South Louisiana.
Clifton Chenier
as Himself
James Brown was the jewel in the crown, but the throne of Cincinnati’s King Records always belonged to its irascible founder, Syd Nathan. This is the 70th anniversary of the legendary record label and studio. It closed shop nearly 40 years ago, in a now long-neglected warehouse on the neighborhood border of Evanston and Walnut Hills, but its impact still reverberates across today’s music.
The film "Hurricane on the Bayou" is about the wetlands of Louisiana before and after Hurricane Katrina.
Born on Halloween, 1935, Dale Brown's fight for justice began the day his father walked out - two days before he was born. About how an overachiever from tiny Minot, North Dakota relentlessly fought his way to the top.
Phillis Wheatley Elementary School was a significant landmark in the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans, serving as an important educational institution for African-American students for nearly half a century. The school was known for its innovative modern design that was unique to the region, reflecting the area’s cultural and historical roots. However, the school sustained significant damage during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath in 2005. Despite the damage, the school’s unique design caught the attention of DOCOMOMO Louisiana, an organization dedicated to preserving modern architecture. They advocated for the restoration of the school through adaptive reuse, citing its historical significance and architectural importance. The organization produced this short film, “A Plea for Modernism,” narrated by actor Wendell Pierce, to raise awareness of the school’s cultural and historical value and promote its restoration.
A naïve farm girl is duped by con men who promise her movie stardom in exchange for her savings.
In the first half of the 19th century, the French ornithologist Jean-Jacques Audubon travelled to America to depict birdlife along the Mississippi River. Audubon was also a gifted painter. His life’s work in the form of the classic book ‘Birds of America’ is an invaluable documentation of both extinct species and an entire world of imagination. During the same period, early industrialisation and the expulsion of indigenous peoples was in full swing. The gorgeous film traces Audubon’s path around the South today. The displaced people’s descendants welcome us and retell history, while the deserted vistas of heavy industry stretch across the horizon. The magnificent, broad images in Jacques Loeuille’s atmospheric, modern adventure reminds us at the same time how little - and yet how much - is left of the nature that Audubon travelled around in. His paintings of the colourful birdlife of the South still belong to the most beautiful things you can imagine.
What starts off as a conventional travelogue turns into a satirical portrait of the town of Nice on the French Côte d'Azur, especially its wealthy inhabitants.
The life story of Pulitzer Prize winning author John Kennedy Toole as told by friends and colleagues. Legacy format production, representational photography and an original music score combine to bring the author's life into focus. His personal triumphs, his untimely death and the publication of the novel, 'A Confederacy of Dunces,' years after his suicide are all explored in this darkly beautiful first person narrative.
HBO Documentary Films Presents the story of the effort to save the 895th surviving oiled pelican in Louisiana, showing how conservationists, government agencies and wildlife activists joined forces to preserve this one life.
Head to southern Louisiana with filmmaker Matthew Wilkinson to soak up one of the country's best-kept musical secrets: Lil' Band o' Gold, a group of seasoned musicians who churn out an eclectic blend of country, R & B and zydeco known as swamp pop. This lively documentary follows blues-rock legend C.C. Adcock as he scours the marshes and prairies of Acadiana to assemble a supergroup of diverse personalities, backgrounds and musical styles.
In 2019 Mississippi spring flooding hits record highs. Residents of Pierre-Part, Louisiana, prepare for the worst, as authorities are expected to open the floodgates of the Morganza Spillway to save the cities of New Orleans and Bâton Rouge from flooding. Faith and resilience are their only defense.
The definitive film on the history of the toe-tapping, foot-stomping music of French Southwest Louisiana. Includes many Cajun and Zydeco greats, featuring Michael Doucet and Beausoleil, Clifton Chenier, Marc and Ann Savoy, D.L. Menard, and many others.
A young trumpeter rises through the jazz world and finds love.
At the Covenant House, located on the outskirts of the French Quarter in New Orleans, Louisiana, the doors never close, and there is always room for one more. On any given day, a constant stream of young people carrying everything they own in plastic garbage bags fills the courtyard. The prospective residents are just teenagers, but have already been labeled drug addicts, schizophrenics, criminals and outcasts. As one staff member puts it, “the most damaged population of youth that exists in society today”. Filming over the course of a full year, brothers Brent and Craig Renaud tell the raw and emotional stories of the incredible kids who seek shelter at the Covenant House, and the staff struggling to work miracles everyday on their behalf.
Ken Burns' portrait of Louisiana governor and U.S. senator Huey Long.
Another short documentary of "Real Food, Roots Music, and People Full of Passion for what they do!", Spend It All is Les Blank's spirited look at the French-speaking Cajun community of southwest Louisiana. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.
A genre-defying band forms in Austin, covers a notorious rap tune, creates its own acclaimed roots music, and becomes a touring institution while striving to find its place in the challenging landscape of the music industry.
A contemporary portrait of a small Louisiana town created at the site of the world’s largest lumber mill. Captured here in its last days after thirty years, Miss Dixie Gallaspy conducts a charm school for girls in order to teach the young women of Bogalusa the social graces and skills that would guide them into “Ladyhood”. Dixie’s week long school, in a town confronted with many challenges (including a legacy of racial conflict and financial dissipation) preserves fragments of a world that may already be lost.
The life and times of the most original American singer/ songwriter of the last 50 years.
May 2017. As the new President of the United States takes his ease in the White House, the city of Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, is the theatre of the mythic Crawfish Festival. It's just another day, in America.
