Trouble the Water

Wow. This is absolutely the best documentary I've seen in years, and hands-down most engaging and relevant piece I have seen on the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe. It is outstanding: funny, tragic, sharp and smart. Kim simply steals the show, even she's videotaping and you can't even see her, you can only hear her voice from behind the camera. The film is centered around Kim's footage of the hurricane and her life. She is a gifted storyteller and also quite a good rapper. When I saw the film, the theater burst out into spontaneous applause after she performed one of her songs in its entirety on film; in the Q&A, the directors' said that had happened every single time it's been screened.

That this could happen in America is a crime of such a magnitude that no words coming from the Bush administration could ever erase the shame. An amateur rented a camera and her video is supplemented by profession work in this Oscar nominated and Sundance award winning film.

The fact that we had rapid response to the storms that hit Texas afterwards does not negate what happened in Louisiana. This short film brings home the crime that was committed upon this city and it's residents.

Navy personnel aiming M-16s at a crowd of survivors just looking for a warm and dry place to sleep is indicative of the lack of care the government displayed in the aftermath of Katrina. "Get off our property or we're gonna start shooting." Excellent film about some people got their lives together on their own.

The story of the U.S. government's response to hurricane Katrina remains shocking at many levels: the poor quality of the flood defences, the complete inadequacy of plans for evacuation, recovery and regeneration; and above all else, the overwhelming sense that at heart, no-one cared because most of those affected were poor and black. The ground has been covered extensively by Spike Lee in his magisterial film 'When the Levees Broke'; 'Trouble the Water' is a more personal account, a video diary shot by a resident during and after the storm. But it still contains plenty of gruesome insights: the failure to evacuate the hospitals and prisons, and the protection of higher ground from homeless citizens by the armed forces of the U.S. navy, are the most terrible details. The film also depicts the huge burden of trying to rebuild a life that has been completely swept away. As a piece of pure cinema, it's limited; but it's a story that needs to be told and re-told until something is eventually done. Nothing we see gives us confidence that next time, it really will be different, and the citizens of New Orleans will get the first-world treatment that America could surely afford to give them, if only it cared.

Everyone saw footage of Hurricane Katrina on the news. Spike Lee's documentary "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts" dealt extensively with the storm and the lack of response. "Trouble the Water" consists mostly of camcorder footage shot by New Orleans resident Kimberly Roberts before during and after the storm. Partly about the hurricane, the documentary also poses the question of what America is supposed to be all about if it lets this happen to thousands of people, most of them poor and black.

Hurricane Katrina, like the September 11 attacks (whose tenth anniversary is in a few days), is something that should always be remembered, maybe more so. It showed how detached the government had become from its most vulnerable citizens. The collapse of the levees and subsequent flooding of the Lower Ninth Ward became an excuse to dismantle New Orleans's public school system and replace it with vouchers. The documentary is even more relevant now, after Louisiana got a second strike in the form of the Deepwater Horizon spill.

Hurricane Katrina 2005. The ravage of New Orleans. The flooding of the ninth ward. A couple who did not evacuate tells a story of survival and the consequences.

The couple in question is the subject of this documentary. It blends newsreels and footage taken by the couple and the directors. It's not polished, but it's real.

We see amateur shots of the period immediately preceding the arrival of the hurricane, the storm itself, the rising water, the flood aftermath. The couple moves out of New Orleans not intent in coming back. Eventually they do come back and rebuild.

The problem with this documentary is that the exciting part comes at the start. As it gathers distance from the tragic events, it loses steam and eventually becomes borderline boring.

The most pointed line, said by a mother to her son as regard the occupation of Iraq: "You're not going to fight for a country that does not give a damn about you."

There's quite of bit of rap composed by the wife. If you like rap, it's pretty good.