melbourne has an international film festival (going on now). i don’t go to many movies but there was a stack i would have liked to check out. i’ve managed to get to 2.
new orleans music in exile and an inconvenient truth
the new orleans movie left me dissatisfied, sad and wanting to go dancing. the blurb made it seem it would be a mix of music and interviews with artists. that it was. it mainly highlighted something like 7 artists including cowboy mouth, irma thomas, the iguanas and cyril neville. there were also interviews with the head of wwoz, music journalists, tipitina’s owners and club owners from austin & memphis who are reaping the benefits of misplaced musicians.
but the movie left me dissatisfied because it skimmed so many issues. the wwoz guy mentions how the music is so passed on from generation to generation and that is in danger with people spread around (plus the schools being closed or the music programs being closed, etc). there’s brief mentions of organisations like music cares who are helping but there wasn’t any depth in that story line. there’s lots of mentions of the destruction& news footage. some of the artists even give you a tour of what used to be their homes. but there’s no talk of what it’s taking to rebuild. no digging into the issues that musicians would have specific to them (health, money or otherwise). also the movie was just focused on new orleans, none of the local parishes where the zydeco/cajun stuff would have come out more. i have a long list of things the movie didn’t address that i wish it would have.
i walked out having a lot of questions, feeling sad about what was going on, sad about the future of new orleans & its music history and massively homesick for an evening of zydeco music.
(need to run… will have to come back to comment but…) gore’s movie was amazing in terms of the presentation he does. the message wasn’t anything i hadn’t heard before really. he did have some different data and he presented it in amazing ways. the one data/visual that really caught my attention was when he showed florida, netherlands, china, california & india maps and then showed (using colour) how much of the land mass would be under water in x amt of years if the water temperature keeps rising. um…. u floridians….. (and u know who i’m talking to!!!) might want to start thinking about your next relocation.