Courtesy of the Louisiana Film Channel
On a chilly Thursday night in mid-November, I drove out to the Scott home of Country Roads Managing Editor Jordan LaHaye Fontenot. We had gathered on her cozy couch, sugary snacks in hand, to watch Intention, a documentary feature being screened at this year’s virtual Southern Screen Festival. Produced and directed by a pair of Lafayette filmmakers and narrated by eleven Acadiana women, the film beautifully captures the slices of their lives in frame after frame of stunning, mesmerizing footage. We’d been eagerly waiting to see Intention since it premiered at the New Orleans French Film Festival in February, and it was well worth the wait.
But, what if we didn’t have to? What if films made in or about the Bayou State could all be found in one place, readily accessible by the public? Well, thanks to Dr. Lucas Fry, thousands of Louisiana-made titles will soon be made available to anyone and everyone, from the comfort of their own living room.
Fry, president of the Louisiana Film Channel, has a lifetime of experience in broadcast media and has spent the last three years curating titles and designing the new platform, which debuted on Thanksgiving Day.
The channel’s catalog encompasses a wide variety of content, from short and feature-length films and documentaries, to television shows, podcasts, and even music videos. It’s all fair game, as long as the title has some kind of “Louisiana thread”. Viewers will find that some of those threads are looser than others. "It's either you produced it and you live in Louisiana, you acted in it and you're from Louisiana, you funded it and you're from Louisiana, or you're the third spear chucker from the left and you’re from Louisiana," said a chuckling Fry.
Aside from fulfilling a niche in the streaming market, Fry envisions the channel as a way to connect younger filmmakers and new talent with industry professionals, generating even more content made in the Boot. Anyone can submit a work to be considered for distribution on the platform.
“We want to provide a platform for Louisiana filmmakers to be able to recoup, or at least make some money on their work, if not introduce them to someone that may want to invest in them and their next project,” said Fry, who is also general manager of the WLFT-TV station in Baton Rouge. “I want filmmakers to know they now have a place where they can get seen. So if you have a movie, whether it's four minutes long or two hours long, if you need distribution, submit it.”
"It's either you produced it and you live in Louisiana, you acted in it and you're from Louisiana, you funded it and you're from Louisiana, or you're the third spear chucker from the left and you’re from Louisiana."
—Dr. Lucas Fry
The service already has more than 2,200 titles in its streaming library, and will continually add new selections each week. And come 2021, the channel will begin acquiring scripts and developing original content, so screenwriting hopefuls can still set their sights on landing in an LA writer’s room—only, this one is a lot closer to home than the offices of Netflix or Hulu.
As of press time, a week before its official launch, the service already had about three thousand subscribers—the majority of which do not reside in Louisiana, according to Fry. Though, it should come as no surprise that Louisiana-made media attracts international audiences. Users can opt for a free or paid subscription, and the cost is $5 each month or $50 for a year. The Louisiana Film Channel app is available on Apple and Android devices, as well as online.
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