*The Baroness and Her Buildings
Video: VHS, color; 43 minutes
A spirited account of Baroness Micaela Almonester de Pontalba, who during the mid-1800s, weathers a bad marriage, an attempt on her life by her father-in-law, the wrath of the patriarchal Napoleonic legal codes, and the mildew and malaria of early New Orleans. Narrated in part by the late Senator Eugene McCarthy, this documentary also depicts the Baroness’ construction of the famous Pontalba row houses in Jackson Square, their subsequent decline by the turn of the century, and their preservation and restoration beginning in the 1920s. Copyright 1984.
Director: Christina Vella
Baroque Dance: 1675-1725
Video: VHS, color; 23 minutes
An introduction to the social and theatrical dance of the Baroque period and includes texts, notations, and graphic illustrations from the period. Sequences illustrate the minuet, finger and hand movements, and techniques of interpreting Baroque notation. The film concludes with a performance of a four-movement ballet in full costume and masks. Copyright 1979.
Producer: UCLA Department of Dance
Director: Allegra Fuller Snyder
Cathedral
Video: VHS, color; 60 minutes
Based on his award-winning book, author David Macaulay hosts this story of the building and functioning of a Gothic cathedral in medieval France. Told through animation, drawn from Macaulay’s distinctive style, the film traces the planning, construction, and dedication of an imaginative, but historically representative cathedral. Copyright 1988.
Producer: Ray Hubbard-Unicorn Projects
Director: Larry Klein and Mark Olshaker
The Danny Barker Show
Video: VHS, color; 60 minutes
This film documents the life and career of proclaimed jazz master Danny Barker. The cultural milieu and social climates of the era through which he lived, his trials and triumphs, and the impact of his cultural and musical legacy are examined within local and national contexts. Copyright 2001.
Producer: WYES-TV
Director: Matthew J. Martinez
Degas in New Orleans
Video: VHS, color; 28 minutes
Most people are unaware that Degas lived briefly in New Orleans. This video traces his sojourn to and stay in the city, examining the cultural contexts that helped shape Degas’ artistic production. Narrated by noted film director Louis Malle. Copyright 1978.
Producer: Goldman Productions
Director: Gary Goldman
*Degas in New Orleans, A Creole Sojourn
Video: VHS, color; 60 minutes
This film received a WorldFest Gold Medal award for its chronicling of the young artist’s time spent in America. Examples of the works created during his visit are juxtaposed with shots of the house in which his relatives lived to develop a strong sense of the impressions New Orleans made upon the young artist. Copyright 1999.
Producer: Steven Tyler
Director: David Jones
*Faded Creole Ladies
Video: DVD, color; 60 minutes
This film takes the viewer through the history of twelve of Louisiana’s historic plantation houses, documenting their past beauty and their present precarious condition as endangered historic sites. It also depicts an often neglected aspect of plantation life, the structures in which slaves lived and the places they occupied on the huge estates they worked. The documentary especially focuses on the contributions of African Americans to creating a distinctive architectural style that combined African and European elements to form what some scholars believe to be the only truly American vernacular architecture. Copyright 2003.
Producer: Lagniappe Media
Director: Barbara Sillery
*Gottschalk Festival: Life and Music of Louis M. Gottshalk
Video: VHS, color; 60 minutes
This award-winning documentary, written by John Huszar and Kirk LaVine, was the first program produced for television on the life and music of the New Orleans-born Louis Moreau Gottschalk, a 19th-century composer who broadened the Crescent City’s creative heritage to encompass not only jazz, but classical music. Although Gottschalk’s blending of jazz rhythms into classical compositions received brief international acclaim during his lifetime, the composer is little-known today. The program’s national broadcast on PBS in March 1987 helped renew interest in this unique American innovator. Performances by the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra, and solos by Philippe Entremont and Moses Hogan, are featured. Narrated by scholar Robert Offergeld. Copyright 1987.
Producer: FilmAmerica, Inc., New York
Director: John Huszar
*He’s the Prettiest: A Salute to Big Chief Allison “Tootie” Montana’s Fifty Years of Mardi Gras Strutting
Video: VHS, color; 30 minutes
Originally conceived as a companion to a museum exhibit on the artwork of Mardi Gras Indians, this video examines the origins, purpose, and creative process behind the art of designing and constructing a Mardi Gras Indian suit. Shot prior to Montana’s 50th and final year of masking Indian, the piece brings you into the home of the Big Chief and provides brilliant insight into this very creative and powerful tradition.
Producers: Keith Calhoun, William, Fagaly, Chandra McCormick
Director: Will Horton
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* Indochina Revisited: A Portrait by Jean Despujols
Video: VHS, color; 28 minutes
This documentary examines the sojourn of French-born painter Jean Despujols as he traversed Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos in 1936-38. Despujols was selected by the French government to paint a visual record of then French Indochina. Making use of the artist’s travel journals, paintings, and musical compositions, the video offers a glimpse into the past of a region yet untouched by a series of wars and revolutions. It is a highly idealistic view of a diverse and noble people fired in the eternity of their beliefs, and the work embodies the history and culture of a region now drastically changed by the incursion of modern civilization. Copyright 1984.
Producer: Meadows Museum of Art/Willard Cooper
Director: Coconut Grove Productions
*In That Number! The New Orleans Brass Band Festival
Video: VHS, color; 60 minutes
A film documentary that explores the relationship between New Orleans jazz and brass bands, and the city’s cultural and social traditions and developments. Copyright 1985.
Producer: Louisiana State Museum/Tamra Carboni
Director: Jerry Brock
*Jazz Lives - The Great Jazzmen of New Orleans
Video: VHS, color; 60 minutes
A video focusing on New Orleans’ jazz scene past and present with interviews of prominent musicians such as Danny Barker, Pud Brown, and Louis Nelson, among others.
Producer: WYES-TV 12
Director: Evelyn Navarro and Seth Weinstein
*John McCrady’s Southern Scene
Video: VHS, color; 30 minutes
A documentary on the life and times of John McCrady, one of the South’s most influential artists. McCrady’s paintings received national acclaim in the 1930s and 1940s. His New Orleans art school operated for more than 40 years, yet his legacy remains largely unknown to the general public. The documentary surveys his life through his work and through interviews with several of his students. Copyright 1992.
Producer: Choupique Productions/WYES
Director: Matt Martinez
*Making Waves: Louisiana’s Radio Story
Video: DVD, color; 60 minutes
Taking a broad approach, this documentary examines the history of radio in Louisiana, from the first appearance of WWL in 1922. The film discusses the importance of radio in Louisiana politics and culture, with interviewees’ memories of hearing everything from Huey Long speeches to Joe Louis fights and the announcement of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Throughout, the film traces the evolution of diverse forms of Louisiana music as they first appeared on the radio—country music on the Louisiana Hayride, rhythm and blues with deejays Dr. Daddy-O and Tex Stephens, big band jazz on WWL, and Cajun and Zydeco on KEUN and KJBC. Copyright 2005.
Producer: LPB
Director: Tika Laudun
Man in the Renaissance
Video: VHS, color; 27 minutes
Filmed in Italy, this film uses visual imagery, music, and narration to illustrate how humans acquired a new sense of their own importance as individuals during the Renaissance. Copyright 1973.
Producer: Norman Kegan/University of Connecticut
Director: Alessandro Cane
*Mystery of the Purple Rose: Creole Jazz Pioneers
Video: VHS, color; 30 minutes
A documentary on the Black Creole violinist/music publisher A.J. Piron and the musicians in his orchestra. As Piron is considered by many jazz historians to represent that essential evolutionary link between ragtime and jazz, the program explores the origins of the Creole style and its enormous influence on jazz. Actual authorship of the composition “The Purple Rose of Cairo” is the mystery alluded to in the program’s title. Copyright 1988.
Producer: WYES, Channel 12
Director: Peggy Scott Laborde
*Reconstructing Creole
Video: DVD, color; 60 minutes
In the summer of 2004, an electrical fire seriously damaged Laura Plantation in Vacherie, leaving behind only the original Creole structure of the house. This film weaves together the story of Laura, named for plantation daughter Laura Lecoul Gore, who grew up on the estate, which was run by her mother and grandmother, with the stories of those rebuilding the house she lived in. Laura’s nineteenth-century story leads viewers through Louisiana Creole culture and its ideas of language, race, and heritage. Meanwhile, craftspeople working on the house confront the racial consequences of the plantation past, as some realize they may be related to the Senegambian slaves who built the home two hundred years ago.
Producer: Jennifer John/Fresh Media
*Red Beans & Ricely Yours: Satchmo in New Orleans
Video: VHS, color; 60 minutes
A television documentary profiling the primary social and musical influences of the New Orleans years on jazz legend Louis Armstrong. Locations, historic visuals, and recordings shed new light on the development of jazz. Copyright 1990.
Producer: WYES, Channel 12
Director: Peggy Scott Laborde
*Up from the Cradle of Jazz
Video: VHS, color; 30 minutes
This lively and informative video traces the development of New Orleans jazz by focusing on two musical families: the Lasties and the Nevilles. From interviews with family members, still photographs, and voice-over narration emerges an understanding of the relationship between family and artistic production, place, and sound. An attempt is made to locate these familial traditions within the larger structure of jazz and African-American cultural traditions. Copyright 1980.
Producer: New Orleans Video Access Center
Director: Jason Berry |
