Excerpt

In Spike Lee’s celebrated documentary about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006), two of the most memorable interviewees recounting their experiences are denoted, somewhat curiously, as “cultural activists.” Although Lee is celebrated as one of the leading U.S. auteurs of the last thirty years—and, without a doubt, its most influential Black feature filmmaker—he considers his documentaries a key part of his oeuvre. Levees, for instance, garnered both numerous prizes and widespread acclaim for documenting the storm, its ambiguous context, and its devastating aftermath.¹ In making its eponymous case that it was not the storm but the sadly predictable failure of the levees that devastated the city, the film weaves a broad, and colorful, social and political tapestry by mixing sundry cinematic elements: stock news footage; exterior, often shocking, shots of the city contemporary to the filmmaking (in 2005–6); and stylized interviews, some made on-site and some in front of bright pastel backgrounds that obscure the location of the interview.² Tellingly, these stylized interviews do not always feature conventional experts like academic historians, scientists/engineers, or local politicians to play the familiar role of documentary’s tried and somewhat true talking heads. Rather, throughout, Lee also offers nonexperts (or nonconventional experts) who recount their experiences during and after the hurricane and subsequent flood. Often these subjects are designated as residents of this or that parish (a county like St. Bernard or Jefferson) or neighborhood (like the Lower Ninth Ward or Pontchartrain Park). But a good number carry the aforementioned title of cultural activist—an unusual moniker underscoring a number of facets of New Orleans, its multifarious municipal traditions, and its pluralistic polities.