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Other Films
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The first time we went to New Orleans, we had to sneak in. The National Guard had sealed the nearly empty city. After numerous attempts, we found an unguarded bridge on the back side of town. That was the first of what totaled nine trips to the Gulf Coast. One year later, the result was the documentary "Voices of Katrina."
When we set out to find the right families for the film, we realized there were hundreds of thousands of stories out there. But with some good leads, and a little luck, we found three fascinating and diverse families.
Making a year-long "diary" of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina became a more challenging project than we had anticipated. There were the unplanned inconveniences of shooting in region devoid of infrastructure - one night, in the absence of any hotel rooms for 1,000 miles, we had to sleep in our rented car. The rest of the time, we slept on burlap cots in the garage of a house owned by a former Black Panther.
Following these people's lives as they changed for the better (or worse) gives a perspective to this calamity. It unfolds like a calendar, and you get the sense that this year is only the beginning of many on the long journey back from oblivion.
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