Filmmaker: David Redmon
Film: Kamp Katrina
March 12-20, 2008
About the filmmaker:
Kamp Katrina is David Redmon's second documentary film. He made his directorial debut with the 2005 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize nominee, Mardi Gras: Made in China. That film went on to see a theatrical release in 10 cities, a spot in more than 200 festivals and schools, as well as airings on the Sundance Channel, NHK Japan, Taiwan, the Documentary Channel, and several other international television stations. Currently, Redmon is working with Kamp Katrina co-director Ashley Sabin on completing another documentary titled Intimidad, which follows "the other side of intimacy" by focusing on the intimate life of a young woman in Mexico who makes bras for Victoria's Secret.
About the film:
Ashley Sabin and David Redmon's Kamp Katrina follows New Orleans Upper 9th Ward resident, Ms. Pearl and her attempt to open up her backyard to give shelter to those who lost their homes in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Only a month after the storm, she hears a community organizer urging residents to open their homes to the displaced. The warm-hearted Ms. Pearl enthusiastically offers her backyard and soon ten people move into "Kamp Katrina."
Ms. Pearl and her husband attempt to provide resources and paid construction jobs for residents of Kamp Katrina. However, they are forced to deal with the realities of post-Katrina New Orleans - a dysfunctional economy and a often hostile bureaucratic system. Soon the small space of their backyard becomes a problem as stress, drugs and alcohol lead to bad, sometimes violent, behavior.
Kamp Katrina is a story of hope, community, generosity, rebirth and failure. It is neither a fairy tale nor a parable of things to come. It is an unflinching and authentic descent into the prevailing atmosphere of abandonment that still stubbornly grips large areas of New Orleans more than a year after the storm. Even those with resources and good intentions find themselves stymied by the enormity of dysfunction that is but one disaster away from all of us.
Opening Short:
Tour of Homes
Directed by Penny Brice (Documentary)
Once described as the southern belle with a dirty face, Savannah is a city of contradictions, primarily between the haves and have-nots. With its Spanish Moss-draped trees and genteel historic district, it has a dark underbelly of poverty and crime, sustained by racial inequality and fueled by denial. Tour of Homes provides an alternative tour to the ones that cart tourists through the affluent environment of historic downtown Savannah.
Tour Dates & Locations:
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