Lolis Eric Elie, a New Orleans newspaperman ( and now a writer on the 2010 HBO series Treme), takes us on a tour of the city his city in what becomes a reflection on the relevance of history folded into a love letter to the storied New Orleans neighborhood, Faubourg Tremé. Arguably the oldest black neighborhood in America and the birthplace of jazz, Faubourg Tremé was home to the largest community of free black people in the Deep South during slavery and a hotbed of political ferment. Here black and white, free and enslaved, rich and poor cohabitated, collaborated, and clashed to create America's first Civil Rights movement and a unique American culture. Faubourg Tremé: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans is a riveting tale of heartbreak, hope, resiliency and haunting historic parallels.
While the Tremé district was damaged when the levees broke, this is not another Katrina documentary. Long before the flood, two native New Orleaniansone black, one whitewriter Lolis Eric Elie and filmmaker Dawn Logsdon, began documenting the rich living culture of this historic district. Miraculously, their tapes survived the disaster unscathed. The completed film, Faubourg Tremé: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans, which critics have called "devastating", "charming", and "revelatory" is a powerful testament to why New Orleans matters, and why this most un-American of American cities must be saved.
Elie and director Dawn Logsdon make clear the city's present, up through Katrina, remains steeped in its past- one that, for New Orleans, naturally includes an emphasis on music, heightened here by Derrick Hodge's original jazz score and over a hundred years of New Orleans music. This is a film of ideas, a historical film, a personal film and a celebration of place.
