Revisiting "Trouble the Water"

Back in January, at the Sundance Film Festival, I wrote a little notice about Carl Deal and Tia Lessin's documentary, "Trouble the Water," which went on to win the Grand Jury Prize for best documentary. The film, which accompanies aspiring hip-hop artist Kimberly Roberts and her husband, Scott, through the demoralizing devastation of post-Katrina New Orleans, is currently enjoying its first theatrical release, after an earlier NYC run during New Directors/New Films. Over the weekend, both New York magazine and the New York Times ran supportive stories about the film and the moving, remarkable journey of its protagonists.

Here's what I wrote from the festival:

"The other film that wowed me, Tia Lessin and Carl Deal’s Trouble the Water, I saw early yesterday morning, after marching through a swirling snowstorm with a double espresso. (Bad idea.) While a number of documentary films about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath have debuted recently, including Spike Lee’s marathon postmortem, When the Levees Broke, and Ed Pincus and Lucia Small’s searching road movie, The Axe in the Attic, this doc locates its themes of dignity and perseverance in the persons of a truly irrepressible couple, wanna-be rap artist and amateur videomaker Kim Roberts (a/k/a Black Kold Madina) and her husband Scott. Incorporating footage Kim shot of the Category 5 storm from inside her house, the film follows the Robertses as they attempt to survive amid the absurdity and indifference of a federal emergency-response system that utterly failed the residents of the Ninth Ward—not just during the crisis, but weeks and months later. Rebuffed by the National Guard at a crucial juncture, deprived of funds by an enfeebled FEMA, they opt to seek refuge in Memphis, along with Brian, a recovering addict and devout Christian, though they never once strike a tone of bitterness. Lessin and Deal keep the cutaways to President Bush, FEMA director Mike Brown, and New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin to a minimum, but stitch in enough press conference footage to give us a sense of just how profoundly grotesque the difference was between what was said [by authorities] and what was done on the ground. Outfitted with a pulsing soundtrack by Massive Attack, Trouble the Water is a portrait of a community who, though plagued with histories of drug abuse, gun violence, and the emotional devastation of poverty, have learned how, in Kim’s words, to trample over tribulation."

We also interviewed Deal and Lessin at Sundance. You can watch the footage here:

http://www.filmcatcher.com/festivals/Sundance_Film_Festival/day_5/79/

Posted on 08/18/08 by: DGSmith 02:23 PM