Before there was HBO, there was “Faubourg Treme” – the neighborhood and the documentary by Lolis Eric Elie, a Times Picayune writer and also writer for HBO series named for the storied New Orleans neighborhood. Lolis also does food writing which you can read at this link. But I digress, or can I when you talk about New Orleans.
While the Treme district was damaged when the levees broke, this is not another Katrina documentary. Long before the flood, two native New Orleanians—one black, one white—writer Lolis Eric Elie and filmmaker Dawn Logsdon, began documenting the rich living culture of this historic district. Miraculously, their tapes survived the disaster unscathed.
Arguably the oldest black neighborhood in America and the birthplace of jazz, Faubourg Treme 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.
Special screening tomorrow – Saturday, November 6 at 4:30 PM
WHERE: AMC Hoffman Theater, 206 Swamp Fox Rd., Alexandria, VA, 22314
Part of the Alexandria Film Festival.