Mar. 26-28 Film Festival

As I said, "Life in Louisiana is not all Cajun and Zydeco."

Mar. 26 --- Tonight begins the Cinema on the Bayou Film Festival at Pack & Paddle, think Brasington's on steroids!! It's a great venue with comfortable folding chairs (bag chairs), refreshments and good acoustics. The movies are Anything I Can Catch: The Handfishing Story and The Buffalo Flows. In the first, Pat Mire describes the Cajun tradition, taught to him by his father, of wading into the bayou fully clothed (for some reason, that really got my attention) and reaching into a submerged log to pull out a giant catfish or turtle. Gotta admite that Cajun grit. The Buffalo Flows movie included spectacular scenery & interesting history of the Buffalo River in the Ozarks and how its natural beauty was rescued from the damming fate of so many rivers in the search for hydroelectric resources.

Mar 27 --- Friday night's movies are at LITE: Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprise. There is a short, Ken Burns-type movie (still pictures with background music) about the West Nickel Mines Massacre where a man murdered several Amish school children and the community reached out in forgiveness. The second film was called Hot Flash (can you relate?) about three middle-aged women who formed a blues band and travelled all over the world as Saffire, the Uppity Blues Women. Lots of music and happinesshere!!

Mar. 28 --- Saturday takes me to Cite des Arts in downtown Lafayette for Evangeline. This film looks at the myth of the Longfellow poem and the possible myth of the back-story related for tourists at the Evangeline Oak in St. Martinville. It takes an intellectual look at the possiblities behind the poem's origins and gives credit to the poem for bringing world-wide attention to the Acadian people in SW Louisiana. The poem, Evangeline, may not tell a true story of lovers separated only to be re-united on their deathbeds, but it (the poem) can be credited for ingniting personal searches that might re-unite families from Nova Scotia and France to their historical cousins in Cajun country.

The second film this morning was a real head-shaker. Called Tsunami Escape, the young film-maker juxtaposes Long Beach, Washington (his former home) with New Orleans (his present home). Until explanations following the film, I was completely baffled. However, it turns out that Long Beach, WA is in a geologically fragile area, part of the Cascadia Subduction Zone and a tsunami was predicted to hit this area in 1995 (he would have been about 12 years old). The film's images were interlaced with Hurricane Katrina photos, sort of contrasting Washington State with NOLA --- or maybe he was exploring his own fragility in making such a drastic change in his life, moving from the WA to LA, and New Orleans, no less. He should give Cajun country a try --- that'll settle his biscuits!!