premiere - maroon: film on new orleans creole community and life

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Maroon
New Film on Louisiana Creole Music and Community Life
Premieres in New Orleans, May 31, 2006


A new film--Maroon: On the Trail of Creoles in North America--by Quebec filmmaker Andre Gladu will have its New Orleans premiere on May 31st at 7:30, in the historic St. Augustine Church (at St. Claude and Governor Nichols Sts.), where some of it was shot. “Maroon� as a word refers to the enslaved people in Louisiana and elsewhere who managed to escape and create hidden communities outside the plantation society and economy that held them captive. Maroon communities often were strong keepers of the cultural sources of Africa as well as earlier French and Spanish colonial period contact culture.

Quebec’s leading cultural documentary filmmaker Andre Gladu, who has previously created works on topics ranging from Cajun music to New Orleans bluesman Snooks Eaglin, has joined rural and urban Creole cultural life in his new work. Maroon includes performances and interviews with noted New Orleans jazz musicians Michael White and the venerable trumpet elder Lionel Ferbos. Just as surely it portrays the music of rural French Louisiana Creole accordionist Zydeco Joe. The array of performances and performers includes the White Cloud Hunters Mardi Gras Indians, the rural community of Soileau’s Mardi Gras revelers, the Zion Harmonizers, and archival footage of Champion Jack Dupre.

Of special interest to New Orleanians will be the portrayal of life in the city in the year prior to the deluge. Much of this is seen through the eyes of the legendary parish priest Father Jerome LeDoux of St. Augustine Church in the historic Tremé neighborhood who speaks of the Afro-Catholic experience. In addition elements of African-Caribbean cultural connections to the spirit world of Creoles are described by a Haitian school teacher working in French Louisiana.

In a larger sense the Creole struggle for freedom and recognition is viewed in musical terms as the contributions of jazz to world culture and zydeco to a transformative vision of the French imprint in the Americas are revealed. In this light, the notion of a Maroon in contemporary society speaks to the survival, and creative transformation of the Afro-French Creole culture into the 21st century within the larger American nation.

Sponsored by Basin Street Station and public radio’s American Routes, the film showing is also supported by the New Orleans Film & Video Festival that had originally planned to present the work of Andre Gladu at their Fall 2005 gathering--cancelled by the catastrophe. Admission is by donation of $7.00 at the door. Special sponsorships are available. All proceeds go to the St. Augustine Church.

For information: Call Sandra Heaslip at 504-293-2639