Rodrigue’s first wife, Veronica Rodrigue Redman, his widow Wendy Rodrigue Magnus, and Rodrigue’s two sons, Jacques and André, all make multiple appearances in “Blue” and were in attendance at the premier. Close friends and collectors, including Henry Shane and Clancy DuBos, add personal stories and insights, as do Emeril Lagasse, Drew Brees, James Michaelopolos, Marc Morial, and James Carville. It’s quite a well-spoken cast.
Except for a brief time at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, Rodrigue was a lifelong Louisianan and was very proud of his Cajun heritage. In “Blue” we hear him talking about his desire to preserve in his work the disappearing Cajun culture. In 1921 the Louisiana legislature banned the study of French in public schools, so by the time Rodrigue began his painting career, decades of intentional erasure had already harshly impacted Cajuns in the state. Through a series of paintings described as “bayou surrealism” Rodrigue brought to life the people and the culture he knew best.
The most famous of these paintings is “Aioli Dinner” from 1971, and “Blue” deepens our understanding of this monumental work as it traces, through conversations with Rodrigue, his inspiration (including his grandfather and uncle who are both pictured at the table) and the cultural significance of the gourmet societies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Rodrigue never sold the painting, leading to speculation that he always wanted it to be publicly available; it is now on permanent loan by his sons to the New Orleans Museum of Art.
One of the reasons, arguably, why the formal art world and art critics dismissed Rodrigue from the start is the fact that he was a self-promoting artist. His first show in Baton Rouge was panned by the Baton Rouge Advocate, and yet he sold every piece in that show, presumably after everyone came to see what his first wife called, with a laugh, “those ugly paintings.” Many years of gallery and museum shut-outs were ultimately erased in 2008, when NOMA had the most extensive Rodrigue retrospective to date, an exhibit that was second only to the 1977 “Treasures of Tutankhamun” exhibit in terms of attendance. Director O’Malley lets NOMA Director E. John Bullard admit on camera, “I was wrong" about his earlier assessments of the painter.
No doubt another transgression in the minds of the formal art world was Rodrigue’s enormous success with the Blue Dog. “Watchdog,” the painting that first introduces the loup garou (a fictional animal in Cajun storytelling tradition), was finished a few years earlier, but it’s not until 1988 when this work was part of a Rodrigue show held in a gallery in Los Angeles that the words “blue dog” were first uttered, apparently by a patron. That may have been a lightbulb moment, as Rodrigue took that characterization and the appeal of this bewildered creature and ran with it. (100)
Much of the rest of “Blue” carries us along as we watch Rodrigue take the Blue Dog to the NFL, the White House, and beyond. As the film makes clear, it was never Rodrigue’s intention to paint a million blue dogs until he realized what kind of deep emotional vein he had almost unwittingly tapped into. (53)
The film was scored by the Lost Bayou Ramblers who provide a striking soundtrack to “Blue.” Rodrigue’s widow Wendy tells the viewers right up front in the film, “George didn’t paint what Louisiana looks like, George painted what Louisiana feels like,” and the same can be said of Louis Michot and his bandmates. It was a perfect pairing of sound and vision.
While distribution rights have yet to be secured for “Blue,” it seems likely that this lovingly crafted documentary will become available in the near future. Lovers of Louisiana culture, keep your eyes peeled!
A King Like Me
The esteemed director Stanley Kubrick once said, “A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings.”
By that measure, “A King Like Me,” the opening night feature of the 35th annual New Orleans Film Festival, is like an Ellis Marsalis composition: eloquent, evocative, and intimate.
Filmed before, during and after the COVID pandemic shutdown, “A King” tells the story of the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club as it met the challenges of that extraordinary period. As is the way with stories like this, that starting point also allows Director/Cinematographer Matthew O. Henderson and Producer Fisher Stevens many opportunities to tell a broader, older story.
Zulu lost a disproportionate number of club members in 2020 when the pandemic crisis was at its deadliest. One of the first losses was 2007 King Larry A. Hammond, who passed in April 2020. The film includes footage of his socially distanced funeral, heartbreakingly small, and the police-escorted drive-by salute where hundreds of people paid tribute to his mourning family - a long, honking parade of a different sort than the usual Zulu jazz funeral that Club members provide to their fallen brothers.
“A King” brings the viewer into places where most of us have never been, and it creates a beautiful, up close experience for its audience. Prior to the initial filming, Director Henderson earned the trust of the Club to tell its story in the words of its members, and tell it they do. The cinematography is often tightly framed, as when we listen to Club members speaking in King’s Alley at 732 N. Broad, the home of Zulu. Those lively conversations are punctuated here by a brass band, there by a fierce game of dominoes, and frequently with laughter.
We peek inside the club to witness the election of 2022 King Rudolph “Rudy” Davis, complete with official state voting machines and visits from local and state politicians. We see him later backstage at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, preparing for his coronation. Close-ups of the King’s suit, and his crown, hint at the majesty that will soon unfold. We also witness some backstage jitters, as you might expect from a night where one man receives such acclaimed recognition of his leadership, commitment and service. Over 20,000 people attend this gala event. If you’ve never been to a Zulu Ball, here’s your chance to see some of its grandeur and joy.
As Director Henderson said during the panel discussion after the film’s opening night screening, it was his intention to use the stories of the Club and its members as a way of illuminating the larger issues facing Black Americans. Through conversations with Club members including Zulu President Elroy James, 2016 King Jay H. Banks, Oliver Reed III (member since 1995) and Rodney Mason, Jr. (member since 2006) and his father Rodney Mason, Sr. (member since 1979) we hear frank discussions of Zulu traditions and challenges, which are sometimes one and the same.
The black and white make-up, worn by Zulu every Mardi Gras, and by The Tramps on other occasions throughout the year, continues to be a topic of consideration and debate. We hear from traditionalists, reformists, and those who stand on the common ground between them. It’s important to be reminded, as we are in “A King,” that when the Club was founded in 1909, it was illegal for Black men in New Orleans to wear a mask. Had masking been an option back then, it’s possible that Zulu would have worn masks instead of the make-up, then and through the years.
Most prominently featured among the Club members is Terrence Rice, member since 2014. It’s Mr. Rice that guides us through the entire film. He takes us fishing, singing The Wild Magnolias’ classic “New Suit” as he casts his line. We hear how he lures family and friends to help him decorate 600 coconuts for Mardi Gras day. Mr. Rice is a thoughtful, articulate man with strong feelings. He introduces us to his parents and shows us family film footage, opening up another layer of this film’s powerful emotional impact. We learn that he met his wife at a Zulu ball well before he became a member.
The viewers accompany Mr. Rice as he visits, for the first time since Mardi Gras 2020, an empty Zulu den during the early phase of lockdown in New Orleans. We later see that same empty clubhouse in 2021 with several inches of water on the ground floor, courtesy of Hurricane Ida. And in one of the movie’s most poignant scenes, filmed on the neutral ground outside Bullet’s Sports Bar, Mr. Rice and his friends, including activist/poet Chuck Perkins and cultural historian Jacques Morel, discuss race and mixed ancestry.
The issue of the gap in life expectancy for residents of Southern Louisiana and New Orleans, based on where we live, is a wider discussion that Mr. Rice, a homeowner who raised his family and continues to live in Destrehan, Louisiana, initiates as he’s driving along chemical storage facilities. That important topic is continued in the film by Dr. Takeisha Davis, CEO of New Orleans East Hospital and the captain of the Mystic Krewe of Femme Fatale, and Ashli Devan Ecclesiastes, Chief Equity Officer at the Ashé Cultural Center. All three joined Director Henderson for the after-screening discussion at the Orpheum.
Long-time Zulu fans will be thrilled to see the vintage footage included in this film, courtesy of the Historic New Orleans Collection. We also see homemade movies of the historic Claiborne Avenue neighborhood before the interstate destroyed that vital district in the early 1960s, and we watch as Louis Armstrong rolls as Zulu King in 1949. Earlier Zulu parades are featured, as are more recent parades where the scale and significance of Zulu to Mardi Gras and to the city are evident in every frame.
No portrait of Zulu would be complete without acknowledging the key role that it played in New Orleans’ return to life after the devastation of Katrina. Zulu members interviewed in “A King” express a particular pride in this, though the decision to parade in 2006 was hotly debated within the Club at the time (leadership met in exile outside the then barely functioning city). At the time, to some outside the Club, parading so soon after Katrina seemed the wrong thing to do. However, parade they did, and from the archival footage, that parade brought a uniquely healing joy and a sense of re-connection to all who participated and witnessed that special Fat Tuesday.
For a parade that was created to allow Black New Orleanians an opportunity to celebrate Mardi Gras despite the entrenched segregation of New Orleans in the early 20th century, it is especially moving to understand how essential the Zulu parade is now to this city’s most festive day. As one Zulu member explained from his perch in King’s Alley, “Zulu is owned by everybody. There would be no Mardi Gras without Zulu.”
How does a filmmaker capture so much brotherhood, love, humor, resilience, pageantry, and respect into only 85 minutes? Making a great movie like “A King Like Me” is a kind of magic. That magic reached a near capacity audience at the Orpheum on opening night. Hopefully, once distribution for this beautiful documentary is secured, many more people will be able to learn about this unique Social Aid and Pleasure Club and experience, if only vicariously, the excitement and fun that thousands of New Orleanians do every Mardi Gras morning. All hail, “A King Like Me!”
I Love You, AllWays
One of the best things about the Oscar-qualifying New Orleans Film Festival is its goal of supporting local talent and helping Crescent City film professionals develop their craft and launch their projects.
This year, festival-goers had the chance to see the second feature length documentary by Stuart Sox, who splits his time between New Orleans and New York City. “I Love You, AllWays” brings viewers behind the curtain, literally, at The AllWays Lounge and Cabaret, the self-proclaimed Pearl of the Marigny.
Mr. Sox’s first feature premiered at the 2020 NOFF, and “To Decadence With Love, Thanks for Everything” won that year’s Jury Award for Best Louisiana Feature. “Decadence” subsequently went on to other North American film festivals. In 2022 Mr. Sox secured a distribution deal for “Decadence,” making it available to stream on various commercial platforms. Now that’s a launch!
For his contribution to this year’s festival, Mr. Sox was nearly a one-man show, directing, producing, and editing his own cinematography. “AllWays” was first shown to a full house at the Broad Theater, and that night’s entertainment continued afterwards at a party in the Toulouse Theater. A second showing followed the next night, and the film was also available on the festival’s streaming platform.
This film captures the experiences of AllWays proprietor Zalia BeVille and the club’s performers as they faced the challenges of the 2020 COVID pandemic and the various versions of lockdown that continued into 2021. Resilience and pandemic survival strategies are what’s up in a number of documentaries being released in 2024, no doubt because many of those films were shot in 2020/21 and even 2022, with editing and post-production thereafter right into 2023, when festival submission deadlines hit.
For the uninitiated, The AllWays, located at 2240 St. Claude Avenue, has two performance spaces, a small live music room up front with the feel of a neighborhood bar, called The Lounge. The Twilight Room is in back with a separate entrance on Marigny Street. While entertainment happens on both stages, many of the burlesque and queer performance art shows are featured in the back, with the cabaret and Sunday drag shows generally in the larger front room. AllWays is, as Ms. BeVille describes in the film, “very queer and very theatrical.”
For a creative community who thrives on live performance and direct interaction with an audience - like the artists who perform at AllWays - the pandemic was extremely difficult, spiritually and financially. One of Ms. BeVille’s most clever pandemic pivots in 2020 was The Peep Show. During New Orleans’ initial lockdown, individual performers danced inside the club in front of large street-facing windows that allowed patrons, one at a time, to stay on the sidewalk outside the club, go behind a large exterior curtain, and view the performer - safely separated by glass and socially distanced from other patrons.
This experiment is one of many that we see Ms. BeVille conjure during the film. Viewers can almost see the cogs turning in her mind as she faces one setback after another: the first shutdown, a soft re-opening, the Delta resurgence, scaling back to accommodate the smaller crowds then allowed to gather, and then Hurricane Ida. Through it all, Ms. BeVille’s thousand watt smile and her indomitable spirit shine. She’s the heart and soul of AllWays and the star of this documentary, despite being surrounded by loads of queer talent.
“I Love You, AllWays” introduces us to many of the artists who helped carry the venue through this treacherous period, some of whom are still presenting work there. Synamin Vixen, Angie Z, Tsarina Hellfire, Lola Van Ella, and Queen Quan identify fluidly as drag artists, singers, body painters, clowns, dancers, and burlesque and queer performance artists. Each one of them speaks to the importance of having a place for their creative expressions and the support that Ms. BeVille provides them. “I like to give open reigns to people with visions,” is how she puts it.
While New Orleans has other drag venues and queer bars, there’s something unique about the AllWays, and it’s the sense of community and the creative permissiveness that all derive from Ms. BeVille’s driving force. This documentary captures that special essence. As Madame d’Camelteau says on camera, “There is no equivalent in the city. There are places where aspects of it happen, but it all comes together at AllWays.”
“AllWays” includes many scenes from these core performers and their shows in 2020/21. The characters and their antics are funny, bold, and bawdy. The costuming and props are often brilliantly conceived. When you have as rich a topic as The AllWays, sometimes all you have to do is let the camera roll.
Spoiler alert: the final scenes of the film show the AllWays crew preparing for their New Year’s Eve celebration, bidding adieu to 2021 and welcoming what everyone hoped would be a better year. The fact that you can still go to AllWays and enjoy multiple performances nearly every night in 2024 is a triumph and, like this documentary, a testament to the power of creative community.
That’s a Wrap!
Thirty five years in the making. Twelve days, twelve panels. Seven parties. Over 145 films, feature length and short, a number of major premieres. Many hours of viewing pleasure, in person and via the streaming platform. The 35th annual New Orleans Film Festival wrapped up on October 27th, just before Swift Nation arrived here in the Crescent City. It was truly an embarrassment of riches!
Submissions came from all over the world, but the NOFF offers a unique opportunity for filmmakers from the south, and those with a regional focus, to present their work. Of particular note to WWOZ listeners were a number of films, narratives and documentaries, that captured elements of the vibrant life here in Louisiana - the people, our culture, and the land and waterways we share.
“Delacroix” - About 30 miles southeast of New Orleans, Delacroix, Louisiana was once a community with hundreds of families, Isleños who descended from the Canary Islanders who arrived there in the late 18th century. Now, as the land continues to disappear under rising waters, 48 people live in Delacroix, including 81-year-old Thomas Gonzales. Mr. Gonzales is a lifelong resident in this watery part of St. Bernard parish. His house (his third, after one that was destroyed by Hurricane Betsy and a second by Hurricane Katrina) rests 17 feet above ground, or rather, above the surrounding marshlands and estuaries. As he boats around the waters that are his backyard, and where he continues to fish, Mr. Gonzales shares his love for this imperiled community. This six-minute film by award-winning director Keely Kernan is a beautiful reminder of how much we have to lose in our rapidly changing climate.
“Évangéline” - Set in the 1940s, a Cajun teenager with a passion for the swamp and for singing (in Louisiana French, as is this short film) defies her father’s prohibition on exploring the woods that surround their home. There, Évangéline meets a Rougarou, the mythical and cursed wolf-like creature of Cajun folklore who comes out at night to haunt the swamps and bayous. Based loosely on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem of the same name, “Évangéline” is directed by Cory St. Ewart, who also edited his screenplay. A capacity crowd at the Contemporary Arts Center was on hand for this world premiere. Mr. St. Ewart and his small cast worked closely with local language experts to deliver an authentic Southern Gothic take on Cajun culture. An MFA candidate at Columbia University with roots in Lafayette, Mr. Ewart is a talented storyteller whose future projects will hopefully bring him back to the NOFF.
"Ishak" - This 12-minute portrait of Maaliyah Papillion and two of her elders in the Atakapa-Išhak Nation had its world premiere at the NOFF. “Ishak” introduces us to this young filmmaker and rising tribal leader, who is next up in the sacred lineage of her people and will, once she ascends, become the second woman to lead the Atakapa-Išhak since 1771. Anyone with historical curiosity would want to know more about the Atakapa-Išhak, who have inhabited southwest Louisiana and southwest Texas since well before colonial times, but the focus of this film is on Ms. Papillion and her elders. The film feels almost too brief, as much as those fine twelve minutes show us. We hear Ms. Papillion speaking in the tribe’s once nearly extinct language and we see her conducting root work as she describes her calling, that of preservation of her people’s language, traditions, and connection to their ancestral lands. This documentary is itself an action of preservation, lovingly rendered and one that was recognized by the NOFF with a special mention award.
The Buzz of St. Roch - Filmmaker Carl Harrison, Jr. brought the camera, and us, to his family home in the St. Roch neighborhood of New Orleans, where we find him under the net and smoking the hives in this lovely 11-minute documentary. Produced by a creative cohort at the New Orleans Video Access Center, “Buzz” traces the Harrison family roots several generations in this part of the Seventh Ward. Partially as a way of honoring his father’s legacy, and in recognition of the need for more sustainable uses of land right here in the city, Mr. Harrison became a beekeeper. The connections he makes with neighbors and other beekeepers and gardeners speaks to the resilience of spirit that New Orleanians are known for.
"The Solace of Sisterhood" - This 10-minute portrait of the Caramel Curves, an all-Black female biker crew in New Orleans, won the Best Short Documentary award at this year’s NOFF. That’s great news for directors/screenwriters/
See y’all at next year’s New Orleans Film Festival!
