Films @ the O

The Ogden Museum of Southern Art is pleased to announce a weekend of documentary films that explore Southern culture through music, art and architecture, as well as addressing the future of the region and the United States.

Special deal! All 3 movies: $10 for Ogden Museum/NOFS members; $25 for nonmembers

For more information about the screenings: 504.539.9616.

TICKETS ARE NOT ISSUED. Check in at front desk.

Sat. July 23
Live at Preservation Hall: Louisiana Fairytale – A film by Danny Clinch
6:30 doors; 7 p.m. screening

For 50 years, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band has kept the traditions of New Orleans jazz alive, performing both at home and on tour around the world. Along the way, they have brought in collaborators of all musical stripes to play, honor, and reinterpret America's first true art form. In Louisiana Fairytale (59 min. 33 sec.), director Danny Clinch documents their collaboration with American rock band My Morning Jacket, showing a legendary group of New Orleans musicians passing on traditions and inspiring a new generation.

Produced by Clinch and Preservation Hall band leader Ben Jaffe, the film features an intimate performance by both bands in the French Quarter's historic Preservation Hall.

This screening is a sneak peek leading up to its New Orleans debut at the New Orleans Film Festival (Oct. 14-20, 2011), which is presented annually by the New Orleans Film Society (http://neworleansfilmsociety.org).

For more about the film: http://www.dannyclinch.com/?p=3148.


Sun. July 24
The Big Uneasy –A film by Harry Shearer
1:30 p.m. doors; 2 p.m. screening

The first documentary by long-time "mockumentarian" Harry Shearer, The Big Uneasy (95 min.) gets the inside story of a disaster that could have been prevented from the people who were there. Shearer speaks to the investigators who poked through the muck as the water receded and a whistle-blower from the Army Corps of Engineers, revealing that some of the same flawed methods responsible for the levee failure during Katrina are being used to rebuild the system expected to protect the new New Orleans from future peril.

         In short segments hosted by John Goodman, Shearer speaks candidly with local residents about life in New Orleans. Together, they explore the questions that Americans outside of the Gulf region have been pondering in the five years since Katrina: Why would people choose to live below sea level? Why is it important to rebuild New Orleans?

         The Big Uneasy is laced with computer imagery that takes you inside the structures that failed so catastrophically, and boasts never-before-seen video of the moments when New Orleans began to flood and the painstaking investigations that followed. The Big Uneasy marks the beginning of the end of almost six years of ignorance about what happened to one of our nation’s most treasured cities—and serves as a stark reminder that the same agency that failed to protect New Orleans still exists in other cities across America.

For more information about the film: http://www.thebiguneasy.com.


Mon. July 25
God’s Architects – A film by Zack Godshall and Emilie Taylor
5:30 doors; 6 p.m. screening

God's Architects (82 min.) is a documentary that tells the stories of five divinely inspired artist-architects—Floyd Blanks Jr., Rev. H.D. Dennis, Kenny Hill, Leonard Knight, and Shelby Ravellette—and their enigmatic creations. The film details how and why these oft-marginalized creators, with neither funding nor blueprints, construct their self-made environments.
       In the spring of 2005, Emilie Taylor, then a graduate student at the Tulane School of Architecture, received a travel grant to research and document self-taught and visionary builders around the South. After visiting and documenting a number of builders, most of whom professed some degree of divine inspiration, Taylor shared her findings with filmmaker Zachary Godshall. Immediately attracted by Taylor's stories, drawings, and photographs, Godshall decided to visit the builders himself.
         And so in November 2005, Godshall set out from south Louisiana with a camera, tripod, and microphone to interview and document the work of Floyd Banks Jr., a divinely inspired castle builder living in the east Tennessee hill country.
        Three years later, Godshall completed a feature-length film that both examines and celebrates the work of Banks along with four other solitary builders who have constructed similar monuments. Beyond the builders and their work, the film functions as a personal essay that explores the nature of inspiration and one's dedication to a creative project, no matter how absurd or mysterious the circumstances may seem.

For more about the film:  http://www.godsarchitects.com.

These film screenings are a collaboration between the Ogden Museum of Southern Art (www.ogdenmuseum.org) and the New Orleans Film Society (http://neworleansfilmsociety.org).