“When the world has opened: Katrina and its Afterlives” launches at MoMA | MZ

Hurricane Katrina touched the landing in August 2005, tearing the southern states and damaging singular damage to New Orleans, one of the most diverse and sophisticated American cities, and one of the great points of creativity in Nexus. The disaster brought out vigilance groups with racial motivation, killed nearly 2,000 people and moved about a million more on the Gulf coast, almost half of which have never returned to their old houses. This has also led to the transformation of the city, mainly in the hands of real estate developers who sucked properties at the sale prices of floods and tried to gentrify one of the major centers of black American culture. And this inspired a renewed appreciation of the singular and irreplaceable personality of the city of New Orleans, whose nucleus persisted and prosperous.

“When the world has opened: Katrina and its Afterlives” is an ambitious museum of modern art and television series exploring the geography, history and identity of the city, as well as the impact of the storm and its consequences. Invilts priest by the Chamme Maya Cade and Crimtic program and Champs K. Austin Collins program, it brings together a range of features, shorts and television programs on life in The Big Easy. A full schedule can be found on the series page on the MoMA website. This piece highlights some of the favorites of this writer.

“In the electric mist” (2009), directed by Bertrand Tavernier

If you have never seen this film, or even heard, don’t worry: you have a lot of company. This adaptation of the same novel by James Lee Burke, the second of his books by Dave Robichaux to adapt for the film, after “Heaven’s Prisoners” of 1996 – was only twice in theater in the United States. The theatrical cut of director Bertrand Tavernier ran 117 minutes. The distributor ordered it at 102 minutes and sent it on video. The displayed version is the long time, which I saw for the first time via press skills. He has more atmosphere and narrative breathing than the shorter cut, and is completely superior.

The film features Tommy Lee Jones as a Dave, a detective las of the world who investigates the murders of local sex workers simultaneously, reinvesting a lynching of 1965 and revisiting his own past as the Redneck son of New Orleans. Peter Saarsgard plays a spoiled Hollywood star who is in town to make an epic of civil war and never tells the truth when he could lie. John Goodman plays the farm from Dave Julie “Baby Feet” Balboni, a troublemaker connected to the crowd that has reinvented as a film producer. “Flat Louisiana, New Orleans is a morgue, and the bottom of the toilet has more appeal than this Shithole in the Bayou” is the way Baby Feet describes Louisiana after the storm. (Goodman can also be seen in the pilot episode of “Treme” of HBO, which screen his Saturday September 6 at 7 p.m., and will be followed by a conversation between the guest curator Maya Cade, the creator of the series David Simon and the Costar of “Treme” and the native of New Orleans Wendell Pierce.))

“In the electric mist” also deals with the tradition of the region of institutionalized and independent racism, which dates back centuries and has taken many forms. The investigation into the murder becomes personal when she brings back Dave at the time at the school that he saw a fugitive prisoner in chains dead by guards while tripping in the water of the marshes. The language is colorful and profane, and there are many characters nonchalantly racist, but it never has the impression that the film thinks that it is as cheeky or scandalous as to present a hard version of reality. Screens Sam, August 30, 1 p.m. and Monday September 1, 6.30 p.m.

“Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” (2009)

Directed by Werner Herzog in a mood of pranks, this unusual follow -up is a showcase for a jumping expressionist performance of the star Nicolas Cage, and the point of origin of the legendary exaggerated line “Shoot Him Again – his soul dances always!” It is also strangely his own thing. Neither the continuation of nor the restart of the criminal thriller of Abel Ferrara from 1992 imbued with Catholic guilt, Herzog plants one foot in comedy and the other in surreal horror and never lacks the opportunity to make viewers back down in their seats or to climb their surreaux by succeeding. MAR screens, September 2, 7:00 p.m. and Fri, September 12, 4:30 p.m.

“Already seen” (2006)

This science fiction thriller of time interpretation on the desire for control and the desire to redo the couples spent in Denzel Washington and one of his most reliable collaborators, Tony Scott. It was the first major production to be drawn in New Orleans after Katrina. It seems that a lot of nothing colorful does not know insofar as the film itself finds an unexpected and coded way of facing what happened to the city where history takes place. The entry of the MoMA catalog into the film says it best: “Like New York films after September 11 could not avoid the subtextual grace of the traumatized psyche of the city, Already seen Put the soul of New Katrina Newly Exposed New Katrina. “If I could twin this film with a science fiction film post-September 11 in New York, I would choose” Cloverfield “or” The After Tomorrow “, which does not concern September 11 in an official sense, but did not need to be, because horror was still so cool in the minds of viewers that imagery was talking about itself. Screens Sam, August 30, 7:00 p.m. and Wednesday, September 10, 4:00 p.m.

“Enter the ax” (2010))

From the writer-director Aaron Walker, this project was filmed over a period of five years; He opens seven months before Katrina and has before and post-twist sequences. The subject is fat Tuesday, as experienced by three great chefs who supervise the construction of the elaborate costumes of their tribe, who merger the experiences of their ancestors as an extensive people and the Amerindians who took them back after escaping captivity. The opening ramp says: “Once defined by violent clashes between them and with the police, the tribes are now fighting on who has the prettiest costume.” Screens Sea, September 3, 7:00 p.m. and Monday September 15, 4:00 p.m.

“When the levees broke: a requiem in four acts” (2006) and “If God is arranged and Da Creek does not get up“” (2010), directed by Spike Lee.

The first film of the Spike Lee movies in New Orleans focuses on the storm and its immediate consequences. The special IRE is aimed at the Bush administration for its inability to take care of New Orleans, which is more like useful, racial and politically motivated negligence while Lee searches in history. The 2010 follow-up is more dispersed and decentralized because it is the dispersion of the poor and black population of New Orleans, first by the deluge and then by the gentrification; And the impact on business concerns, in particular real estate companies and industrial polluters. “If God is wanted,” has a rhythm of prejudice and tripping, and feels towards the end as a desperate attempt to tell each piece of local and national embezzlement before the film lacks time and collapses, spent. The two films form an immense kinetic painting of corruption, racism, incompetence and endurance, anchored to human dramas as intense as everything in the scripted work of Lee.

The pair also belongs to a limited list of Lee’s largest collaborations with its regular composer Terence Blanchard, an native son whose mother lost the family house in Pontchartrain in the flood. It is a virtuoso display of the musical imagination. Late in the film, there is a montage without words and strangely hypnotic of the praetment of BP gushing in the Gulf of Mexico for 86 consecutive days, marked by Blanchard with an enré and exhausted requiem played on a pipe organ. Blanchard has re -recorded sections of “When the Levees Broke” for his 2007 studio album “A Tale of God’s Will: A Requiem for Katrina”, which also includes music inspired by his conversations with the survivors. “When the levies broke: a requiem in four acts” screens Sun, September 7, 3:00 p.m. and (fairly appropriate) game, September 11, 6:00 p.m. “If God is arranged and Da Creek does not get up” screens Sun, September 14, 3:00 p.m. and game, September 18, 5.30 p.m.

“Down by Law” (1986), directed by Jim Jarmusch.

The next feature film by Bowery Sphinx after his first “Stranger Than Paradise” launched three bizarre (John Lurie, Tom Waits, Roberto Benigni) in the same prison cell in New Orleans, then looks at what’s going on after their breakup. Not much happens, in fact, this is almost always the case in the films of Jarmusch, which discover comedy and pathos in long breaks, empty spaces and thwarted plans. Waits and Lurie made the songs and scoring, which will live in your head for the rest of your life, as well as the maniac performance of the jailbirds of “We Scream for Ice Cream”. This projection is of a 35 mm black and white printing. I envy anyone who can see it at MoMA. “Down by Law” screen kills, September 16, 4:00 p.m. and Friday September 19, 6.30 p.m.

Two documentaries by blankOne of the great columnists of New Orleans, receive projectors. “Always for fun” (1978) could have been subtitled “everything you need to know before making your first trip to New Orleans”. Many classic control points are covered here, including Saint-Patrick, on Tuesday fat, jazz funeral and live performance by musical talents of local origin, notably Professor Longhair, Kid Thomas Valentine, The Neville Brothers, Allen Toussaint and Irma Thomas. Bell pepper (1973) is a white companion Dry woodOn the dry wood Ardoin and Cajun music, focusing on Clifton Chenier, alias the king of Zydeco. “He turned so many people on the wonderful animated dance music of Zydeco,” said Mick Jagger The guardian On what would have been Cenier’s 100th anniversary. “It was a real original, a pioneer.” “Always for fun” screens from Monday September 4 at 4:30 am; “Hot Pepper” Screens Thu, September 18, 4:00 p.m. and Saturday September 20, 4:30 p.m.