Spring Break
Film focuses on Katrina
TYRONE RIVERS
Issue date: 3/23/09 Section: News
Nearly four years after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Southeast, New Orleans remains a disfigured city as it struggles to rebuild. The effects of Hurricane Katrina became the inspiration for a documentary by acclaimed producer/director Spike Lee. Lee's documentary "When the Levees Broke - A Requiem in Four Acts," concluded the 2009 African American Film Festival on Friday, an event sponsored by the Institution for African American Studies.
A doleful feature-length documentary "When the Levees Broke" tells the harrowing stories of those directly affected by the remorseless Hurricane Katrina that destroyed southern Louisiana. The documentary concentrated heavily on what many perceived to be a late federal government response to those displaced by the storm.
Lee interviewed many from every part of the New Orleans community, and included responses from figures from different levels of government and well-known people in American culture, such as rapper Kanye West, CNN reporter Soledad O'Brien and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Michael Eric Dyson, author of "Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster," equated the ordeal to slavery, as families "lost sight, sound and sense, of loved ones," through the separation and shipment to various parts of the country.
One University student, who visited New Orleans during spring break, said it was hard to take in what he watched on film.
"I feel sorry for the people," said Tony Singer a freshman from Columbus. "But it was uplifting to see that [though the government was slow to respond to the victims], there were still people in the city willing to help."
As New Orleans natives dispersed, many moved to the Atlanta area. Ebuka Anyaorah, a freshman from Suwanee who attended the festival, spoke about a student who joined his high school basketball team after being separated from his mother.
"There were days that he would come to school and didn't want to speak to anyone. He would just shut people off."
But around that Christmas, he heard his family was coming to visit him.
"That's when he became a whole new person," Anyaorah said.
"We can't close our eyes to the effects of Katrina," said Lesley Feracho, associate professor of African American and Romance Languages. "We wanted to end with this to look at issues of social justice, hope and change as it links to the new presidency."
A doleful feature-length documentary "When the Levees Broke" tells the harrowing stories of those directly affected by the remorseless Hurricane Katrina that destroyed southern Louisiana. The documentary concentrated heavily on what many perceived to be a late federal government response to those displaced by the storm.
Lee interviewed many from every part of the New Orleans community, and included responses from figures from different levels of government and well-known people in American culture, such as rapper Kanye West, CNN reporter Soledad O'Brien and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Michael Eric Dyson, author of "Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster," equated the ordeal to slavery, as families "lost sight, sound and sense, of loved ones," through the separation and shipment to various parts of the country.
One University student, who visited New Orleans during spring break, said it was hard to take in what he watched on film.
"I feel sorry for the people," said Tony Singer a freshman from Columbus. "But it was uplifting to see that [though the government was slow to respond to the victims], there were still people in the city willing to help."
As New Orleans natives dispersed, many moved to the Atlanta area. Ebuka Anyaorah, a freshman from Suwanee who attended the festival, spoke about a student who joined his high school basketball team after being separated from his mother.
"There were days that he would come to school and didn't want to speak to anyone. He would just shut people off."
But around that Christmas, he heard his family was coming to visit him.
"That's when he became a whole new person," Anyaorah said.
"We can't close our eyes to the effects of Katrina," said Lesley Feracho, associate professor of African American and Romance Languages. "We wanted to end with this to look at issues of social justice, hope and change as it links to the new presidency."
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