By: Patricia Alexander
As someone who is fascinated with the culture of New Orleans, I wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to hear a talk by the award-winning filmmakers Bill and Turner Ross who are scheduled to release their new documentary, Tchoupitoulas, this March. On Tuesday, January 10, the filmmakers presented to a public audience at Metairie Park Country Day School on their upcoming film about New Orleans culture that is predicted to receive attention from the Sundance Film Festival in 2012 for the New Frontier section.
After much success with their first film 45365 about their hometown, Sydney, Ohio the brothers were awarded the 2009 SXSW Grand Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature, only one of their many accolades. Their very next project was to take on New Orleans, a place where they had spent much time as children and where their father currently resides. Their new project will use their unique style of documenting the experience as a distinct time and place- no voiceovers, no interviews, purely the time, place, feeling and emotions as they are happening.
Tchoupitoulas explores cultural dynamics of New Orleans through the eyes of three young boys from the West Bank who frequent the French Quarter where they are exposed to a world many their age have only experienced in movies. The film sets out to capture not only the dynamics of New Orleans and the complexities not seen to the naked eye, but also the naivety of a young child experiencing many of these things for the first time and the adventure they find as they explore the streets of the Quarter. The result is an amazing anthropological description of three boys experience in the Crescent City, curated by the filmmakers but told through the eyes of a local.
Coming from someone who constantly tries to describe the layers to this rich New Orleans culture, I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of the Ross brother documentary in March. They have not only taken the time to learn the city’s culture and the landscape, but they care enough to depict it in a way that shows more than the Nation’s stereotype, showing that these national myths are only one element in the lives of the people who reside in New Orleans.
For more info visit: http://www.rossbros.net/tchoupitoulas.html
