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Last Updated: Oct 29th, 2008 - 11:46:30 |
Even though Kimberly and Scott Rivers set out to videotape the events of August 2005 when Hurricane Katrina hit the U.S. Gulf Coast, the resulting documentary, “Trouble the Water,” is also a rare first-person account of being Black and poor today in the United States.
With any documentary about race or poverty, it is not unusual for the issues of voice and perspective to take center stage. Those old-school treatments of the subject, when a White person, or a designated Black (DB) from the media comes to the ghetto to frame and explain it, are so tired. In contrast, snippets of video by the Rivers couple feel fresh, authentic and are an exercise in citizen journalism in the era of Youtube.com, video e-mail and video cameras on cell phones.
The movie, which is receiving a theatrical release across the country and won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, is not entirely made by the couple. Their footage wound up in the hands of Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, producers for “Fahrenheit 9/11” and “Bowling for Columbine,” who incorporated it into a larger movie that includes the couple’s journey after the storm. Even so, the initial footage by the couple sets the tone for them to be themselves and to speak for themselves in their own environment. It is not always easy to watch but it contains moments of humor and horror. It offers a brief portrait of an impoverished community drowned by a flood but also by years of poor education, a lack of jobs and limited opportunity.
The opening scenes are the first that I’ve seen of the Ninth Ward of New Orleans in the hours before and during Katrina’s fury and the resulting failure of the city’s levee system. One such levee was only blocks from the home of the Rivers family. “Trouble the Water” shows close-up the people who had no car to leave town as mandated by city officials. No public transportation was made available. Kimberly and Scott decide to ride out the storm and survey several others in the neighborhood who intend to so the same. From their viewpoint, we see the consequences of their decision and can compare those consequences to the fate of thousands who reported to the Louisiana Superdome and were either stranded there or on nearby blocks in an island of misery.
Kimberly is a reliable narrator, a sort of hip-hop Oprah. She gathers food that she shares with her neighbors as they are holed in her attic, and then in a building across the street. A neighbor wades in chest-deep water and uses a gym punching bag as a flotation device to rescue several stranded neighbors. During and after the storm there are harrowing moments. Even three years after Katrina, as the national tragedy has been examined and dissected, there is something about this humble first-person account that reveals the human ordeal from a different perspective.
During the movie, we learn that Scott is a former drug dealer who wants but has not been able to find honest work. Kimberly is a talented, aspiring rapper (The Black Kold Madina) and she spits a poignant rhyme from her CD demo that speaks to the hardships in her own life as the child of a deceased drug addict. Her aspirations go a long way to explain her comfort in front of the camera and, even though rappers are always looking for publicity, her talent does not diminish the value of her voice, her story and that of her community.
This review also appeared on Tom Joyner's BlackAmericaWeb.com,/i>
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