Watch: 'Fauborg Treme: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans'
Faubourg Treme is considered the oldest black neighborhood in America, the origin of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, and the birthplace of jazz. Five years before Hurricane Katrina hit, two New Orleanians, one white and one black- filmmaker Dawn Logsdon and writer Lolis Eric Elie - began documenting the rich living culture of Faubourg Treme, then a little known neighborhood overshadowed by the adjacent famous French Quarter.
Their tapes miraculously survived the flooding that devastated their city. Now, six years after the flood, the completed film uncovers Treme’s unique and hidden history and situates it within three centuries of African American struggle - from slavery through Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and Civil Rights, to the recent threat of Hurricane Katrina.
Faubourg Treme: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans is one of those rare films that transcends a local story to expand our national understanding of the American experience.
Long ago during slavery, Faubourg Treme was home to a large, prosperous, and artistically flourishing community free black people. It was also a hotbed of political ferment. Here black and white, free and enslaved, rich and poor co-habitated, collaborated, and clashed to create much of what defines New Orleans culture up to the present day.
In so many ways its story reflects the tortuous path taken by African American history over the centuries.
Faubourg Treme: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans was largely shot before the Katrina tragedy but edited afterward, giving the film both a celebratory and elegiac tone. It is a film of such effortless intimacy, subtle glances and authentic details that only two native New Orleanians could have made it.
68 and 56 min versions available, 2008, closed captioned Executive Producers: Wynton Marsalis & Stanley Nelson Director: Dawn Logsdon; Writer: Lolis Eric Elie Producers: Lucie Faulknor, Dawn Logsdon & Lolis Eric Elie Composer: Derrick Hodge
