New
Orleans
A two-hour documentary
history
for the American Experience
New Orleans – the utterly original American
city that lies at the mouth of the mighty Mississippi and
at the beating heart of the great American experiment. Walled
in on almost all sides by water, pressed together by the demands
and dangers of geography, the crowded streets of New Orleans
have always been a laboratory where the social forces that
characterize American life play out in dramatic and, at times,
disastrous fashion. With the documentary film New Orleans,
Insignia Films and American Experience tell the  story
of this unique and beloved city, exploring both its distinctive
history and culture, and illuminating its central place on
the American landscape.
The history of New Orleans is, first and foremost, the story
of race in America. There, a full century before Louisiana
became part of the United States, slaves and free blacks,
Africans and people of the Carribean diaspora, whites from
France, Spain and the American heartland all comingled, creating
a culture of assimilation and tolerance on the one hand, and
vicious racial hatred on the other. At the same time, the
challenges of diversity have been consistently and constantly
amplified by the peculiar accident of geography that is New
Orleans. Perched on the narrow natural levee of the Mississippi,
a ribbon of high ground no more than two miles at its widest
point, the city has had to wage a perpetual war against the
implacable force of water – a war that has produced
one of the most improbable and precarious cityscapes in the
country, and one of the most revealing. Thanks partly to the
pressures of the environment, which have both shaped and answered
the city’s most insistent social problems, the dynamics
of race in America have been writ large in the streets of
New Orleans.
The city’s unparalleled density and diversity has also
created one of the most vibrant and authentic metropolitan
cultures in the country, one that has always set the New
Orleans apart, not only from other American cities but from
the rest of the world. From the political and racial dramas
that have long animated Carnival and its socially-exclusive
Krewes, to the cheek-by-jowl, outdoor lifestyle that gave rise
to the ubiquitous street parades and then to jazz, to the
human gumbo that spawned the city’s signature
dish
– each ingredient at once blended with, and yet distinct
from, the rest – the cultural life of New Orleans
has served as a muse for some of the country’s most
famous creative minds (among them Tennessee Williams and
Louis Armstrong), and has come to embody much of what is
best about America.
Over the course of two compelling hours, New Orleans traces
the history of this remarkable city through revealing first-hand
interviews with New Orleans natives and scholars, and a
rich trove of archival material (much of it miraculously
spared from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina).
Vividly bringing the film up to the current moment is a
series of verité-style portraits of people now living
in or returning to the city, including famed restauranteur
Leah  Chase,
“The Queen of Creole Cuisine” and the members
of the irreverent “Krewe Du Vieux,” the first
Mardi Gras organization to parade after Katrina. Also featured,
both on camera and on the film’s soundtrack, is New
Orleans’ current cultural ambassador, renowned jazz
musician Irvin Mayfield. Jeffrey Wright narrates. New
Orleans premiered on February 12th, 2007 on American
Experience.
|
