New Orleans Film Festival / November 2018

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LEJ's Louisiana 

Yours Truly in a Swamp

Monthly e-column @ www.LEJ.org 

 by

Leonard Earl Johnson,

of Lafayette and New Orleans

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Archives: www.LEJ.org

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~ The Big Splash ~

 LEJ.org 
The 29th Annual 

New Orleans Film Festival

                                                       Photo credit:   Scott Billington

November 2018

by Leonard Earl Johnson

© 2018, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved

        

www.LEJ.org

"If you can not have a good time in New Orleans, 

you can not have a good time." 

~ L. A. Norma

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Amtrak's Sunset Limited from Los Angeles, California, and points between, pulled into New Orleans one-half hour late.

"Early," L. A. Norma said, "by great-again American standards." She lit a Camel Cigarette, and bid farewell to two young women from Los Angeles we had met on the train. Black, pretty, actors traveling to Big Swamp City for 2018's Film Festival. Dedicated this year to women and minorities in the film industry.

The first night was at the one-hundred-this-year Orpheum Theater, on the edge of the French Quarter, and across Roosevelt Way from the historic Hotel Roosevelt.

Screening: GREEN BOOK, a film with lore galore. A true story about black 1960s jazz sensation, Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), and his white driver, furloughed Copacabana bouncer, Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen) touring the American South
"Redux DRIVING MISS DAISY," Miss Norma said.
The title 'Green Book' comes from a book published in those days (1962) that listed hotels accommodating black travelers in the Jim Crow South.

Filmed in New Orleans, the audience of self indulgent locals and dazzled out of town-ers were gleeful at seeing clearly that scenes depicting 'elsewhere' below the Mason Dixon Line had actually been filmed on the very stage where now we watched the film ~ the Orpheum stage.

"Sort'a like the Morton Salt girl," L. A. Norma said, in her best stage whisper. All around us, heads nodded and throats murmured concurrence.

Some hotel scenes were shot at the grand old Hotel Roosevelt, across the Way.

After the screening and panel discussion, director, Peter Farrelly, cast members in attendance, the story's author, Nick Vallelonga (in real life the Son of the Lip), and a thousand jubilant movie fans Second Lined behind the Kinfolk Brass Band up the aisles and out the door to Canal Street, and marched along the edge of the French Quarter to the Jung Hotel ballroom ~ to one hot-food station with a very long line!

Heavy true story, wonderfully told with humor and gravitas.

New Orleans has been anointed by MovieMaker magazine as the finest after-party festival in the World. Easy to believe!

Some after-events were private, on riverboats. Some were open in green gardens. Others were atop post Katrina skyscrapers stretching defiantly above the reach of any future swirling Seas. And some let you beat your feet on the banks of the Mighty Mississippi River.

We plotted to attend but two of these parties, Opening Night and Closing Night. Others tempted, but so did deadlines. We ended up doing three. Parties, that is ~ deadlines still linger.

RIVER BANK ROLLER BOOGIE, at Riverfront Park ~ a green linear space along the Mississippi River where once cargo ships tied up and stevedores labored.

Dressed in Fabled Sixties disco party motif this event-spectacular was particularly appealing.

"Tonight's cargo?"
According to L. A. Norma,

"Wee the 'm/f movie-fan' people."

Open to anyone with the price of admission. It was a night of New Orleans' love for sale ~ Just pay that price and climb those stairs to paradise . . .

Or, in this case, an elevator. All under the remaining roof covering concrete floors of an otherwise demolished warehouse. In gentrify-chic Faubourg Marigny ~ alongside America's flowing heart artery, the Mississippi River. Wow, as they say in Los Angeles.

Open breezes washed up The River all the way from the Bay of Tampico. Ships passed in the night. Roller skaters, too. Cage Dancers danced. Music from the Fabled Sixties wafted over the water. The camera's perfect light, in the Land of Dreamy Dreams.

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One thing any film festival is, is a trade show exchanging finished products and budding ideas. A place to meet filmmakers from afar and near.

The two ingénues who rode in on the train from Los Angeles were seen again at the Prytania Theater (Big Swamp City's only remaining free-standing one-screen movie house) for the powerful Steve McQueen directed, WIDOWS ~ as good as thrillers get.

Plot: Women made widows by Chicago Police gunfire. Thrown together in a desperate attempt at gaining power and actualization behind their own guns, and the leadership of widow number one, Viola Davis.

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Another day, we met with Louisiana director/scriptwriter, Zack Godshall, who returned to Louisiana from California a few years ago, looking like the boy-next-door belonging more in front than behind the lens.

Zack Godshall in short hair days

Now, with academic status (he is an associate professor) at Louisiana State University, he sports an artist-philosopher's length beard and hair befitting his status as the most-popular-film-professor in Baton Rouge.

"Could a toga be next?" Norma asked, blowing Camel Cigarette smoke over the Saint Charles Avenue balcony.

Godshall's first narrative films, LOW AND BEHOLD and LORD BYRON, premiered at Sundance, and were praised in The Atlantic, and The New York Times.

Today, at the 2018 New Orleans Film Festival, he is screening a class project. A series of little films called HOGWASH. 

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At the VIP Lounge, on the second-floor of Festival sponsor, New Orleans Advocate, we talked with Michele Benoit and Glen Pitre. In 2003, film critic Roger Ebert acclaimed Pitre "a legendary American regional director."

Known as the original Cajun film makers, they created the wildly popular BELIZAIRE THE CAJUN ~ Louisiana's first locally produced high-production feature film, in English. "Our first films were in French." It premiered in 1986 at the Cannes Film Festival.

We could see but a few of the over three-hundred and eighty films screened during the Festival's two half-weeks bracketing one fat weekend. And still find time to party. MovieMaker magazine way understated the temptation!

Outstanding and not to be missed:

Played to two SRO screenings

BOY ERASED 

American-Australian coming-of-age drama.  Based on Garrard Conley's 2016 book of the same title.  It was scripted for the screen and directed by Joel Edgerton. 

The film stars Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, and Edgerton.  With a cameo by gay South African born, Australian music sensation, Troye Sivan.

It follows the Son (Hedges) of Baptist preacher parents (Kidman and Crowe) 

who force him to take part in a gay conversion camp.  He is, at long last, saved from further shaming by his loving ~ converted ~ Mother.  

Redemptive, uplifting, fabulous! Don't miss it.

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Closing party and film

A TUBA TO CUBA

Directed by T.G. Herrington and Danny Clinch.  Writer: T. G. Herrington.

The Film played to a packed house at the Contemporary Arts Center, on the last night of the Festival.

After a panel discussion everyone regrouped for Cuban food perfecto, and music from both lands, at Buktu / Revolution Bar, on Thalia Street.

The well done film follows New Orleans famed Preservation Hall Jazz Band as they retrace their musical roots from NOLa to the shores of Cuba seeking a connection between the two musical cultures.

Preservation Hall
A hometown favorite. Featuring Preservation Hall's current jazz tuba master, business manager, and leader of the band, Ben Jaffe (pictured here on the bass).

Their trip to Cuba follows in the large footsteps of his late Father, and Preservation Hall founder, Allan Jaffe, who made a similar journey of discovery many years ago.

We loved the film.

Allan and Sandra Jaffe with son Ben.
(Photo courtesy Preservation Hall)

A little something extra:
Preservation Hall Jazz Band and Ben Jaffe were performing guests of honor, two years ago, at Touro Synagogue's annual Jazz Shabbat ~ the one Jazz Fest event I try to never miss.

At the Shabbat 'after party' I had the chance to utter that once in a lifetime line to Ben Jaffe, "I knew your Father, and he would be proud of you."

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On the train out of Town, a middle-aged man in the club car wearing a light blue seersucker suit and black t-shirt, handed me his card stating he was 'A Cannabis dealer from Colorado.' He was on his way back from Atlanta, he told us, where some Easter Island like stones were found indicating the World's population needed to be cut back to one-half a million. This was the first I'd heard of this, but I had been in New Orleans at the movies.

Your comments and corrections are welcome: Comments

Lagniappe du Jour

2018 New Orleans Film Festival awards

Some jury-winning films automatically qualify for consideration for the Annual Academy Awards®

 without the standard theatrical run, provided the film otherwise complies with Academy rules. 
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Too many to see, too many to write about!
Here are a few notables among notables ~ with links 

The Chloe Wine video that preceded all screenings
~ an ad, a short film,
 a delicious must taste masterwork ~

PROJECTION was done by Mekanism advertising agency for Chloe Wine Collection in the United States. It was released in April 2018.
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ROMA

Alfonso Cuarón Netflix Movie
Academy Award®-winning director and writer

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FATHER'S KINGDOM

Father M.J. Divine was a forerunner of the American Civil Rights Movement  The Harlem Riot of 1935 served as his catalyst

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THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS

A film by Joel and Ethan Coen
(Actually six great little films about yee ole West) 
~ The legendary Coen Brothers ~

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THIS TACO TRUCK KILLS FASCISTS

Rodrigo Dorfman film

 Winner: NOFF Best Louisiana Feature Award

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IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK

Director: Berry Jenkins
based on James Baldwin's novel by the same title

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Dum spiro, spero
(North Carolina state motto in Latin)
English: WHILE I BREATHE, I HOPE
French: Tant que je respire, je l'espère

A film by the English title, about Bakari Sellers,
North Carolina rising star politician 
~ Sellers was present at NOFF screening and question session ~

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Buckjumping

Director: Lily Keber,  Producer: Lily Keber, Stephen Rose
DP: Zac Manuel,  Editor: Jane Geisler

NOFF award: Best Cinematography Prize (Louisiana Feature)

~ Buckjumping / Vimeo trailer ~ 

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Bending Lines: 
The Sculpture of Robert Wiggs
 

Director. Allison Bohl Dehart, Peter Dehart,    Producer: Lisa Osborn

DP: Matt S. Bell, Allison Bohl Dehart,   Editor: Allison Bohl Dehart, Peter Dehart

~ Bending Lines / Vimeo trailer ~

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The Star Sisters singing 
HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD
~ not a part of the 2018 New Orleans Film Festival,
simply here for your entertainment ~

Copyright, 2018, 

Leonard Earl Johnson

All Rights Reserved

Your comments and corrections are welcome: Comments

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It is written by Leonard Earl Johnson
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