God on whose side

>> Peter Entell examines the post-Katrina
battle to save a New Orleans parish
in Shake the Devil Off

by MATTHEW HAYS

The images have been etched onto our minds. When Hurricane Katrina slammed into the East Coast over two years ago, it appeared no one was properly prepared. The levees broke. The place flooded. And, for some reason, the authorities couldn’t seem to help thousands of the stranded, most of them poor, black or both.

Over 1,800 people died as a direct result of the disaster, but the fallout is still being felt. And while the catastrophe—widely regarded as the worst natural calamity in U.S. history—left a lot of questions about environmental degradation and government infrastructure, it raised just as many concerning America’s ongoing racial and class divisions.

Now, Swiss filmmaker Peter Entell explores many of these questions in his new feature documentary, Shake the Devil Off. The film examines the disturbing case of the St. Augustine Church in the heart of New Orleans, considered by many historians to be one of the first places where slaves and non-slaves, black and white, worshipped together in the U.S. But six months after Katrina, when residents were already dealing with an ongoing nightmarish situation, they were told that their priest, Father LeDoux, would be transferred from the parish and that it would be shut down. The Catholic archbishop who made this decision never seemed to offer up a very good explanation, other than that the parish was losing money. Making matters worse, the archbishop with the plan to shut it down is white, while LeDoux is black.

Poignant but devastating

The results are stirring, with Shake the Devil Off revealing a story that is at various times devastating, hopeful, infuriating, funny and poignant. Entell says he became aware of the story while at home in Switzerland, when a friend and New Orleans resident called and told him about what was happening to her parish. Apparently, she felt having a documentary filmmaking team on board to capture the events was imperative. “She said that it might be heating up and that I needed to get over there in the next couple of days.”

Entell heeded the call, arriving to see with his own eyes (and camera) what was unfolding. As the parishioners learn that they are going to have to give up their beloved priest and house of worship, they gain national attention by barricading the doors and occupying part of the church, insisting they won’t leave until they are assured their parish and priest will remain. Things heat up when the national media arrive; the Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson also show up to chime in on the parish’s dilemma.

“At times, the documentary seems more like a movie,” Entell says. “I was struck with just this as I was filming. People spoke with such passion and clarity, it was as if it were scripted. And as with most movies, there is conflict, confrontation, heightened tension, a climax and denouement. We experienced events as the protagonists experienced them. They were every bit as rich as fictional characters in literature and cinema, and they had all changed by the end of the film.”

Outsider’s perspective

Entell seems to have approached the material with a fly-on-the-wall approach, much like the documentaries of celebrated American filmmakers Barbara Kopple and Frederick Wiseman. Did the fact that the filmmaker is Swiss-based give him the benefit of an outsider’s perspective while capturing the proceedings?

“One often hears that a stranger or foreigner can point out things that locals just take for granted. I don’t know. I am very much an outsider to New Orleans, and if I was to understand anything, it was because of the generosity and patience of those involved to guide me. I’ve been working in films for 30 years, and yet this is the first time I have made a film in the United States. It was the first time I felt I had access to such a poignant, far-reaching story.”

Most striking about the closure of Shake the Devil Off is how devoid it is of any actual closure. Much of the parish’s fate is still up in the air. “Yes, the film ends on a question mark rather than a complete resolution. I believe that such an ending makes the film stronger. Even if everything had been happily resolved at St. Augustine Church, the greater problems this one story reflects—racism, arrogance, greed—continue to be rampant.

“Half the city of New Orleans still hasn’t returned.”

Shake the Devil Off screens as part of the RIDM, which
runs Nov. 7–18. For more info see www.ridm.qc.ca

Lens on the world

>> Dictatorship, nuclear bombs and the drug trade at the 10th Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal

MIDEAST MEDITATION: Description of a Memory

by MARK SLUTSKY

Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, the Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal has proven itself to be one of the city’s most interesting and thoughtfully programmed festivals. As always, there’s plenty of breadth to their selection, with films representing over 30 countries at this year’s edition, addressing a variety of subjects with a range of filmmaking techniques representing a broad definition of the documentary genre—though there’s definitely an emphasis on politically-minded filmmaking.

Jean-Michel Carré and Jill Emery take a hard look at Vladimir Putin—and not cheese curds—in Le Système Poutine, which explores the former KGB head’s consolidation of power. Exploring the other side of the geopolitical coin, The War on Democracy is Aussie journalist John Pilger’s take on the U.S.’s ugly involvement with Latin American politics over the years.

Sergeï Loznitsa’s Blockade is a fascinating illustration of a moment in history—specifically the unimaginable 900-day siege of Leningrad, lasting from 1941–1944, which killed close to a million of the city’s inhabitants. Loznitsa’s film is made up entirely of vintage film stock, which he dug up from old Soviet archives. Dan Geva revisits the past through old footage in his film Description of a Memory, which uses re-contextualized imagery from Chris Marker’s 1960 doc on the state of the state of Israel, Description of a Struggle.

The RIDM’s Caméra au poing/Camera at the Ready selection features films of an overtly political bent. Rory Kennedy’s Ghosts of Abu Ghraib is an exploration of the torture that came to light in the Iraq prison in 2004—it may have been swept under the rug by the U.S. government, but the questions it raised are as pressing as ever. ABC Colombia, by Enrica Colusso, is a portrait of a school in a region of South America controlled by paramilitaries, and the effect of the violent drug trade on the young students. Florian Opitz circumnavigates the globe with his film The Big Sellout, an examination of the practice of privatizing public services around the world—health, transit, even drinking water.

The EcoCamera program showcases movies with an environmentally conscious angle. Filmmaker Christoph Boekel returns to the site of the Chernobyl disaster in Chernobyl: The Invisible Thief, to report on the fates of the workers sent in to clean up the mess. On a similar grim note, Bombes à retardement, by Quebec filmmakers Guylaine Maroist and Éric Ruel, is a look at a ’50s-era project where 40 Canadian soldiers were sent to the U.S., where their combat-readiness was tested after being exposed to severe radiation from a nuclear test sites. Unsurprisingly, the long-term effects on the men were grievous, and the survivors are still fighting for compensation today.

There’s also a healthy selection of films with more intimate perspectives. In 9 Star Hotel, filmmaker Ido Harr follows Ahmed and Muhammad, two Palestinian labourers illegally working on construction sites as they dodge authorities and eke out a living. A young Nepalese girl, Sajani, is literally a Living Goddess, in Ishbel Whitaker’s doc about spirituality and politics in the ancient nation. And Anja Al-Erhayem and Eva Mulvad’s Enemies of Happiness follows Malalai Joya, a young Afghani woman, as she runs for office in the country’s first parliamentary election in decades, despite death threats, and helps redefine the role of women in her country.

The Rencontres internationales du documentaire
de Montréal runs from Nov. 7–18; for more
information see www.ridm.qc.ca

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