Trouble the Water

It begins as a lark. A video camera is switched on to record an approaching storm. We get to meet the smiling faces of videographers as they laugh and cajole. We on the other hand know what's about to confront them. Or at least we think we do.

This is a magnificent use of home video built in to a rage against poverty and illiteracy and racism. You can blame the victims here all you want, but image after image, scene after scene the plight of being an African American in this country is shoved in their faces...and in ours.

The lives of this family in the Lower 9th Ward are vividly drawn by themselves. When they confront what is outside, i.e., the post-segregation South, we are startled at the condescension, scorn and devaluation of human lives...if your skin is the wrong color.

The people here have no apologies for their lives. They lay it out and I suspect many will resist what struggles they face. But scene after scene, you can't walk away from this film without a better understanding of racism in America.

The stubborn will ask "Why didn't they leave when they were supposed to?" And this film records "How were they supposed to?" and "Where were they going to go?" In the face of it all, those who survive manage here to triumph. While the footage of the disaster is why most people will buy the ticket to see this, it's the struggle to survive, not only Katrina, that will last in the viewer's mind.

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.

A must-see documentary for anyone interested in the suppression of the poor in the United States. What went down in New Orleans was something even the corporate media had a hard time hiding. FOX News was reporting on Hurricane Katrina and saying the place looked like the 3rd world. The images were startling on the US news, but there was still the undertones of profit. "How will this affect gasoline prices?" Julie Chen asks on the CBS morning show after showing footage of all the homeless blacks.

This is the story as told by the people themselves, not by Anderson Cooper or anyone else. This is how the story should be told because these are the people who lived with it. It's not even a story anyone in uniform could tell because they were part of the problem in New Orleans.

One scene of this documentary allows the locals to narrate how they tried to go to a local Navy base in New Orleans which had been evacuated before the storm. It was empty and it had housing for people which wasn't being used. The National Guard who were protecting the building cocked and loaded M-16s and pointed them at the crowd. Nope, these aren't the stories you hear about on CNN.

You won't hear the story about a man in prison for a misdemeanour before the storm hit either. The television was taken away by the guards before footage of the storm was on the air, when the prisoners finally heard that there was a hurricane outside, they were denied food and most of the guards left.

This is a very good documentary, and an important one because it shows the failings of government. The government doesn't fail everyone, it takes very good care of the rich and businesses, which recovered quicker than anyone else in New Orleans. The government failures are biased towards the poor and visual minorities and this doc. pretty much confirms that thesis.

Four years on and not much has changed in the 9th ward, but the casino is open and the tourism department is showing a flashy video urging people to come to New Orleans. The poor black people aren't around any more, except when they're working for minimum wage. The rest have been displaced from the city where they lived but no longer trust to live in anymore.

Katrina is just one of the legacies of the Bush administration and perhaps a strong indication that the US is a country whose power is in decline. What can you possibly say about a country which won't even help its weakest and most destitute citizen? It sucks.

Trouble the Water: 8 out of 10: Kimberly Roberts is a 24-year-old rap hopeful who took some incredible footage just before and during hurricane Katrina. Carl Deal and Tia Lessin who came down to Louisiana to film a different project about Katrina and found both her and her footage, they switched gears and this movie was the result.

The most amazing footage is the pre-Katrina scenes. Kimberly knows her neighborhood and is a real person. She asks people what they are going to do about the hurricane her uncle buys another bottle of booze, stumbles home, while a 10-year-old pigtailed niece flashes a gang sign, and declares she is not scared of any water.

While I know that neighborhoods like this exist it is still shocking to see people live like this first hand in America. One of the sad strange truths that ooze out of the film is that Katrina is the best thing that ever happened to Kimberly and her friends. The disaster probably saved her life or at the very least gave her a chance at a new one.

Orphaned at 13 when her mother died of AIDS Kimberly is no shrinking violet and she certainly tells it like it is. While Michael Moore veterans Carl Deal and Tia Lessin add structure and social commentary to the film this is Kimberly’s show. The show is both moving and truly fascinating.

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.