6 New Louisiana Documentaries
Coming soon to the screen are stories of Black cowboys, the Pointe-au-Chien Indian tribe, a line dance, faith healers, and more.
Documentary filmmakers in Louisiana have no shortage of cultural phenomena to draw inspiration from. This year, they’ve been intently gathering footage about faith healers, Creole cowboys, indigenous communities fighting to save their home, nostalgic line dances, and so much more. Documentary filmmaking is often a slow process—many of these films have been in production for years already—but local audiences will soon be rewarded with opportunities to watch them, either online or on the big screen at upcoming film festivals. Below are six films in production or premiering this year that we’re especially looking forward to, each exploring a unique cross section of Louisiana culture; collectively presenting a vibrant and complex picture of our state.
[Read last year's roundup of documentary films, here.]
FOOTWORK
Directed by Drake LeBlanc, with support from Télé-Louisiane
Drake LeBlanc, co-founder of Télé-Louisiane and director of the forthcoming documentary Footwork, grew up immersed in the Creole cowboy culture in and surrounding his home town of Lafayette. “Some of our classmates were, like, trying to go to the clubs or trying to go to the skate zone or trying to go play laser tag. And I'm like, we're just trying to go be around some horses,” LeBlanc recalled with a laugh. “We were always the country boys in class.”
As early as middle school, he said, he and his cousin were frequently scheming for ways to skip class to attend local trail rides— basically big parties on horseback that might last multiple days, with live music every night. “It's something that I always appreciated as a kid and wanted to be around.”
During the pandemic, LeBlanc became concerned that these trail rides, which were so important to his community and culture, might not return. So when they slowly began happening again, he realized he needed to turn his lens as a cultural filmmaker to the events that were so important in his own life and community. “I just need to make a personal investment in something that I appreciate, personally, and document it, because I don't know how long it's gonna be here,” he said.
“My idea of this project is showcasing the different perspectives and a different take on what it means to be a Black cowboy in Louisiana, and what it comes from, and where it's going in the future." —Drake LeBlanc
He started by gathering footage of the rides by himself, occasionally hiring a friend to help with filming. After a little over a year of filming sporadically as he was able, he was encouraged to apply for #CreateLouisiana’s French Culture Film Grant, which the project received this year. Since then, production on Footwork has been full speed ahead, with plans to premiere at the 2024 New Orleans French Film Festival next March. “It kinda puts a fire under my feet, which is good. Because, you know, I want to get the project out and let people see it, and to hear these stories that we're capturing.” LeBlanc explained that around half of the interviews he’s gathered are conducted in French or Creole. Subtitles in the alternate language will be included with all of them, maximizing the documentary’s accessibility and reach across languages.
LeBlanc met the film’s subjects by participating in the trail rides himself, building familiarity and trust as he was organically making friends. “I met people going to the trail ride as a guest, not necessarily with my camera, not necessarily with the intention of filming on that day,” he said. “And it's synonymous with barbershops, to like, have conversations and talk about things, and figure out who's from where and where their family's from. . . I think that goes a long way with them, because it doesn't feel like outsiders coming in to probe them with a bunch of questions. It’s just somebody that they actually know, and I would be at their family members’ houses either way, you know, just because of events that they host or just hanging out and cooking or whatever,” LeBlanc said. “So it feels very natural and organic.”
Having a crew made up entirely of Louisiana natives contributed to LeBlanc’s ability to foster a natural, conversational storytelling environment on the rides. “They know that laissez faire attitude, and how to just go with the flow sometimes, have a good time,” LeBlanc said. “And you know, just make that environment feel welcoming, which it always should feel like. So that's how we've been able to get a lot of these stories.”
Ultimately, the project as a whole aims to challenge the generalized perception of what a ‘cowboy’ is, and what cowboy culture can look like. “My idea of this project is showcasing the different perspectives and a different take on what it means to be a Black cowboy in Louisiana, and what it comes from, and where it's going in the future,” LeBlanc said. “So as far as who I'm interviewing, they’re diverse: it's men, it's women. It's old, it’s young. It’s French-speaking, it’s non-French-speaking. So I'm covering all the bases, and then there will be a center point of that story, which people just have to see when they watch the film.”
Footwork will premiere at the New Orleans French Film Festival in March of 2024.
THE PRECIPICE
Directed by Ben Johnson, for Louisiana Public Broadcasting
From the first time director Ben Johnson drove down to Pointe-au-Chien, at the edge of the ball of Louisiana’s boot, where the land thins out to a patchy lacework of marsh, he was struck by the urge to share the powerful story of the tribal community that calls it home. “The people were speaking French, and it was just a little fishing community,” Johnson said. “It was unlike anything I've ever seen.”
After getting the green light from LPB, Johnson reached out to Patty Ferguson-Bohnee, the Tribe’s attorney and a member herself. After a long process of being vetted, and eventually welcomed by them in that small town Louisiana way, Johnson began filming at the Tribe’s annual culture camp. “It was like coming into a little tight knit community, a little family community, where everyone knows each other,” Johnson said. “So I originally kind of just fell in love with that aspect of it, and the different pace of life there.”
Johnson had been working on The Precipice for four months—seeing and shooting all that is at stake as the community’s children learned about Pointe-au-Chien tribal culture and way of life—when Hurricane Ida made landfall, driving home all of the interviews he had been having with leaders about the imminent threat of erosion, and how it’s left the community vulnerable to storms.
“Sure enough, the hurricane comes, the eye of the storm comes right over Pointe-au-Chien,” Johnson said. “And pretty much brings everything we've been talking about to life.” Though Johnson initially thought the project would be a short documentary as part of another series, Ida’s staggering impact made it clear that the Tribe’s story merited a longer feature. While dealing with minor damage from the storm at his own home in New Orleans, he spent weeks after Ida filling LPB’s large truck with supplies to hand out in Pointe-au-Chien. Then, he’d pull out his camera.
“I felt an incredible amount of pride in the project. It really had a full arc of like this hopefulness in the beginning of showing what the town was like, showing this beautiful way of life, then the destruction from a storm that was inevitable to come when the land is disappearing the way it is. And then being able to end on a hopeful note of, despite all of these things, this Tribe is able to secure education for their future generations. It really just completed the arc of the story.” —Ben Johnson
“And so that was pretty rough, you know, trying to ask people to open up to you in one of the hardest times is not an easy thing to do,” Johnson said. “But it's something I tried to effectively communicate to them that ‘you know, it's important that I capture your emotions. It's important that people see just what is at stake.’ And I couldn't have asked for a better response from the Tribe. They let me follow them along throughout the whole process.”
Johnson continued to document the Tribe’s multiple months without water or electricity, still feeling somewhat uneasy about filming such a difficult experience. But within only a few months, the Tribe was back to rallying around their most recent community initiative: advocating in Louisiana’s legislature to get their elementary school open. “And my feelings kind of changed from like a sadness, to like a hopefulness—just the strength of the Tribe to keep fighting to get what they want.”
When the bill approving the opening of Êcole Pointe-au-Chien—which will be the country’s first Indigenous French immersion school—passed unanimously in the state’s House and Senate, Johnson’s conviction for the importance of his project surged with the community’s triumph. “I felt an incredible amount of pride in the project. It really had a full arc of like this hopefulness in the beginning of showing what the town was like, showing this beautiful way of life, then the destruction from a storm that was inevitable to come when the land is disappearing the way it is,” he said. “And then being able to end on a hopeful note of, despite all of these things, this Tribe is able to secure education for their future generations. It really just completed the arc of the story.”
The Precipice will be screened at the New Orleans Film Festival on November 4 at 2:30 pm and November 7 at 5:15 pm at the Broad Theatre.
THE FREEZE
Directed by Peter DeHart and Allison Bohl DeHart, founders of Makemade
It’s no secret that the people in Acadiana and the surrounding areas love to dance—fais do-dos, two-steps, line dances. Usually they’re dancing to home-grown Cajun music, but in the early 1980s, an unexpected transplant song and accompanying line dance worked its way onto the scene, taking root and spreading as rapidly as kudzu.
This might be less remarkable were the song a Billboard top-charting national hit. But to the surprise and amusement of countless Louisianans, Ronnie Milsap’s “If You Don’t Want Me Too”—which, within the sixty-square-mile radius of “Cajun Country,” became associated with a line dance inexplicably called “The Freeze”—was never a hit. It wasn’t even a single; it was a B-side. Millsaps did produce many country music hits, but “If You Don’t Want Me To”—which doesn’t include the phrase “The Freeze” at any point in the lyrics—was not one of them. So how did this song so seamlessly infiltrate Cajun culture?
“I kind of slowly put together that there was this song and this dance that were important to people around here, like extremely important, ingrained in their culture,” Co-Director Allison Bohl DeHart said about first encountering “The Freeze” after moving to Lafayette from Shreveport-Bossier when she was eighteen. “And I always kind of just thought it was a Cajun thing, and that the person that wrote and recorded the song was from Lafayette.”
Her partner and Co-Director Peter DeHart had grown up with the song in Lafayette in the ‘90s, as had their friend and producer of the film Rachel Nederveld. “It was at every wedding and school function. We even learned it like in P.E., and—people in Lafayette would remember this—KSMB would come to your school and have these big music parties and dance, and it was always part of that,” Peter DeHart recalled. “So you know, I always knew it. But again, I never really questioned it.”
What started as three friends laughingly Googling and asking people about their memories of the song soon turned into a full-blown investigation, which will be presented in their forthcoming feature documentary The Freeze. They initially thought the final cut would be a “silly little gem” of a short film at around fifteen minutes, “but as we've done the research, it's just gotten deeper and deeper,” said Bohl DeHart.
They’ve filmed a great deal of footage in the Acadiana area, and are in the process of raising money to follow their investigation out of state to film interviews with the song’s producers, the songwriters, and Ronnie Milsap himself. “We’ve got to go with our cameras to Nashville,” Bohl DeHart explained, “but we’ve also got to get money to go with our cameras to Nashville.”
While funding is often a hurdle for filmmakers, the DeHarts have encountered another challenge more distinct to Louisiana. “One of the biggest hurdles we've come in contact with is that in the Acadiana region in the early ‘80s, people were having a really good time, and they don't remember,” Peter DeHart laughed.
“I think as a Southern filmmaker, you're always like, you know, ‘my film has to be a Southern story. It has to be a Cajun story, it has to be, like, a true South story.’ And we were really drawn to this because it's something that over time has become identity for the people here, but it's actually not from here—or the reality was, we didn't know where it was from,” Bohl DeHart said.
In a landscape of more serious documentaries, “we wanted to just try something that was borderline kind of silly,” Peter DeHart said. But The Freeze is more than that, too. “As we've dug deeper, it is so complex, and like this fun, funny, silly song and dance is very complex and very interesting, and kind of mysterious, and just a whole wild ride,” said Bohl DeHart. “What it really is, is intangible culture that is bringing people together… it's a flippant thing that they pass by every day. But when you dig deeper into something so mundane, it's magical … even though it's kind of just a fun song. It brings people together more than they realize.”
The Freeze is tentatively expected to be completed in 2026. Learn more about the project at facebook.com/thefreezedoc.
TRAITEMENT
By Creative Producer Syd Horn, Director Andrea Villien, Creative Producer/Director of Photography Olivia Perillo, and co-writer Matt Mick
Faith healers and their traditions have existed for thousands of years across countless cultures. In French-speaking Louisiana to this day, they exist as traiteurs like Becca Begnaud, who is the primary resource for and subject of a three-part documentary series currently in production called Traitement, or “treatment,” from Honest Art Productions.
“I talk about healing in this particular culture—healing is in every culture," Begnaud said. “This is not about, ‘become Catholic, talk French, and become a traiteur.’ This is using that culture, this culture that we are all living in because we live in Lafayette, to let people look at healing.”
Begnaud’s influence and impact on the community extends far beyond her work in Reiki and several other modalities of healing, which she turned to following a mastectomy in 1989. That is why after including Begnaud in Honest Art’s 2020 film Intention about eleven women who, in different ways, reflect the cultural heritage of Southwest Louisiana, Horn and the team approached Begnaud about featuring her even more prominently in Traitement.
[Read our story about Honest Art's 2020 film Intention, here.]
“Her opening up her world to us, for me personally, was really beautiful, because I think Traitement is an extension of her segment of Intention. Because she does do so much community work and all these different aspects,” Perillo explained. “And I think that's a really beautiful part of healing is that you have different people in different areas.” She noted that in addition to Begnaud, the film features the work of anthropologist Ray Brasseur, bereavement educator Sarah Brabant, and French historian Mathé Allain. “And just the span of those three subjects in itself really encompasses, makes up so much of her, you know—and not limited to that, of course, but I think it's a good starting point for telling her story.”
“Becca's story reminds me that in one single lifetime, you can live a million lifetimes. And that gave me a lot of hope, knowing her, because it has seriously informed my life and my own healing journey, and I could see how that could be beneficial to others as well." —Syd Horn
Along with the three-part docuseries, the other major aspect of the project, which is being funded by a 2023 ArtSpark grant from the Acadiana Center for the Arts, is community outreach, which will include a four-part “healing arts gathering” featuring talks with Begnaud and various other local healers that concludes with an art exhibition at Maison Freetown.
Andrea Villien is a first-time director, embracing Honest Art’s mission of giving opportunities to non-traditional filmmakers. “That's something that I'm very passionate about,” Horn said. “I love working with artists that are of a plethora of modalities, because it typically lends itself to a very interesting and unique result.”
“[I’m] just a fan of Becca,” said Villien. “And all of these creative people, and [I] really value the collaborative process of this entire project and how we're really a team—everyone kind of sharing those responsibilities, those roles, and creating something pretty special.”
“It's been experimental. It's been challenging. It's been fruitful. It's been many different things,” Horn explained of the production process for Traitement. It’s also been very personal, as Horn and the other creators’ drives to tell this story come directly from their relationships with Begnaud and her philosophies on healing.
[Read more about Becca Begnaud and her healing practice in this story from our June 2016 issue.]
“Becca's story reminds me that in one single lifetime, you can live a million lifetimes. And that gave me a lot of hope, knowing her, because it has seriously informed my life and my own healing journey, and I could see how that could be beneficial to others as well,” Horn said. “But also, that the people that you know in your life are really the ones carrying you. You know, it's not all about you, it's about this village of people that are giving their single contribution to build something greater. And I think from a team perspective, that's kind of the mentality that we're all trying to embrace. But also from a thematic perspective, I think that's a very important aspect to the project.”
Intention, the precursor feature to Traitement, will premiere on Youtube on November 22. The first installment of Traitement is anticipated to be released early 2024.
honestartproductions.com/traitement
COMMUTED
Directed by Nailah Jefferson
In 2017, Nailah Jefferson, director of the feature documentary Commuted, was working as a full-time filmmaker and had just finished making her first narrative short film, Plaquemines. Because of her status as a storyteller and her own personal experiences of having a family member incarcerated—plus her experience working with the New Orleans nonprofit Resurrection After Exoneration—the pastor of her church, Bishop Lester Love, approached her. He said he knew of someone who had a story, and “You all should meet.”
The following Sunday, Jefferson connected with Danielle Metz, who had recently been released from prison after serving twenty-three years. “And we got to talking.” Metz shared with Jefferson her experience of being sentenced to triple life, plus twenty years, for nonviolent drug offenses, before receiving clemency in 2016 from the Obama administration. “I thought this was a story that I could help lend myself to as a storyteller, because we don't hear enough stories about incarcerated women.”
Jefferson pointed out that often women like Metz get caught up in crimes their husbands or boyfriends are involved in, and can end up having excessive charges levied against them. “We also don't learn about how these women are used kind of as pawns really. And when they don't play ball, then all of these charges are levied at them, and they end up with these ridiculous sentences,” Jefferson explained. “In Danielle's case, it took her away from her seven-year-old and her three-year-old. She was only twenty-six when she received that time, and she was gone for twenty-three years, and it's really been an interruption to her life, their lives.”
“I think women often get lost in the prison system—more so than men do. I don't think people think it's a fight that women have. And they absolutely do have it, especially mothers like Danielle and the women that she was incarcerated with." —Nailah Jefferson
Knowing that Metz’s story is only one example of countless women whose lives have been irrevocably disrupted by excessive sentences, Jefferson wanted to lend her voice to shed light on their experiences, and the way the war on drugs can ruin lives over nonviolent offenses.
Commuted is not about whether or not Metz committed the crime she was charged with, Producer Darcy McKinnon pointed out. “I think our point of view is that those films have been made. Danielle's sentence was disproportionate to what she did. And really, irrespective of guilt or innocence, our criminal justice system in America puts a huge burden on Black people and Black families and on Black women,” McKinnon said. “And so this is an exploration of one woman's experience.”
Oftentimes, conversations about prison reform are focused on men, which Jefferson clarifies is incredibly important, too—but Metz’s story serves as a reminder that incarceration impacts women, as well. “I think women often get lost in the prison system—more so than men do. I don't think people think it's a fight that women have. And they absolutely do have it, especially mothers like Danielle and the women that she was incarcerated with,” she said.
For Jefferson and her team, it was important to offer Metz an empowered role in telling her own story. “I think that was Danielle's goal coming home, like, ‘I spent all these years in prison, I have a story to tell. In this story, I'm going to turn it around for good.’ And so she wanted to make sure that she was a part of this process,” Jefferson said. “And I'm thankful that I had a partner like Darcy, who supported welcoming her into the storytelling process, and letting this be a film that empowered her to really use her voice.”
Often when someone is released from prison, the focus is on whether they’re able to find employment and housing, but Jefferson wanted to go further, emphasizing the emotional and psychological journey of the experience. “I think that's a hard enough struggle just in everyday life,” Jefferson said. “But imagine a woman who was incarcerated at twenty-six comes home, she's forty-nine. She's lost all of her youth to incarceration, and she has to not only figure out her life, but where she fits into the lives of the people who she's loved and who she's longed to be with all of these years … I think it's an emotional journey. That's a bit more universal. And I think that's what audiences can really hold on to. So while our industry wants to see more true crime, for us, it was important to show something that was a bit more immersive and emotional, so that people can really get the point of the damage that's done through incarceration.”
Commuted will premiere at the Contemporary Arts Center’s black box theatre as part of the New Orleans Film Festival at 7:30 pm on November 2, and 5 pm on November 7. commutedfilm.com.
BORN TO FLY
Directed by Brennan Robideaux
Director of feature documentary Born to Fly Brennan Robideaux was twenty-one years old, living back in his hometown of Lafayette after dropping out of college, when he decided he wanted to tell the story of Mondo Duplantis. “I've been a filmmaker for all my life. I'm always chasing stories. And naturally, at that point, it was a real make or break moment: I'm either gonna really do this thing or it was time to find another career path, frankly,” Robideaux said. “At that time, this kid in our hometown, Mondo Duplantis, was making small little splashes in our local paper…he jumped an incredible height. Everyone in Lafayette had kind of heard of his family, but didn't know too much about them.”
There was some lore surrounding the Duplantis family, according to Robideaux. Some knew that Mondo’s father Greg had been a record-breaking pole vaulter himself, and his mom was a successful track and field athlete from Sweden. People talked about the fact that the Duplantis’s had a pole vaulting pit in their backyard. “But then I think seeing him appear in The Daily Advertiser—just a little blurb about how he had broken an age group world record, which he had been doing all of his life, come to find out—but that was just like that lightbulb moment.”
Given that Duplantis was only in high school and had already achieved record-breaking success, Robideaux wondered what he would accomplish next—and wanted to document it.
He got Duplantis’s number and texted him, asking if he could make a documentary about him (“because you know, seventeen year olds, they don’t talk on the phone”). After getting the go-ahead, Robideaux dove straight into filming, wheeling his camera gear from his parents' house where he was living at the time across the street to Lafayette High School, where Duplantis practiced.
“You know, there was that magic of a boy falling in love with the same thing that his dad also excelled at, and wanting to impress his father, wanting to challenge himself." —Brennan Robideaux
“He had something in him . . . he grasped the concept of the sport better than anyone had ever seen. And he quickly surpassed his brothers, even at a young age,” Robideaux said. “And his development was extraordinary. I mean, it's not a joke when they say he was legitimately a prodigy.”
Robideaux said he just dove right into the project, chuckling retrospectively at his own boldness. “I figured, screw it. I'm going to jump in the deep end, to a multi-year type doc project of me following them, and just see kind of where it goes.”
Since the project was self-funded, the production process wasn’t particularly glamorous. “I slept on the floor of Mondo’s hotel room for like three and a half years, four years straight. I basically ate peanut butter out of the jar for like, literally three years straight,” Robideaux remembered. “[Duplantis] was getting invited to these massive competitions and starting to really excel. And so I'd have to get to Europe, I would just sleep on his floor.”
As Robideaux sunk more of his savings and time into filming Duplantis, the stakes became increasingly high on the gamble—or “calculated risk”—he had taken on the young athlete. Yes, the heights of his jumps were impressive and steadily increasing, but as Robideaux learned later, oftentimes childhood athletic success does not translate into adulthood. “It was definitely a risk factor of even doing this at all, but I was young and dumb enough to go ahead and give it a shot,” he said.
It became clear as he filmed, and solidified when he edited, that the core of Duplantis’s story was a tale of a bond between a father and son, and their mutual love for a unique sport.
“You know, there was that magic of a boy falling in love with the same thing that his dad also excelled at, and wanting to impress his father, wanting to challenge himself,” Robideaux said. “You know, there's just that beauty of mutual love of something. And when you think about it, being a unique sport like this, to me, that's kind of magic. I love that. I love that it's untraditional, and so that's really what the film became.”
Born to Fly will have its North American Premiere at the Austin Film Festival on October 29 at 3:30 pm and November 1 at 4 pm. It will also be shown at the Prytania Theatre as part of the New Orleans Film Festival on November 5 at 7:45 pm. It will receive its hometown premiere at the Acadiana Center for the Arts as part of the Southern Screen Festival on November 18. borntoflyfilm.com.