VIFF Review: Faubourg Tremé

Faubourg Tremé: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans
Granville 7 Theatre 5
Thursday, October 2 2008 3:00pm

This is an inspiring and enlightening documentary about the little known history of this New Orleans neighbourhood. Told from the viewpoint of New Orleans journalist Lolis Eric Elie, this film uncovers the spirit and strength of its residents past and present.

Now known as the Sixth Ward, Tremé was established as a faubourg (suburb) of New Orleans in the 18th century. It became the gathering place for freed slaves and thrived as a racially mixed community.

A century before the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s there was an altogether too brief flowering of democracy and equality in New Orleans. During the Reconstruction after the American Civil War, free blacks based in Tremé established a period of equal rights for all New Orleanians. Schools and public transit were desegregated, blacks were given the vote, and blacks were elected to city office. But once the Federal troops left New Orleans, the strong Southern racist forces were ready to swoop in and undo the progress. The shocking image of a lynched black man with a sign hung around his neck reading "THIS NIGGER VOTED" tells you what they were up against.

With no other voice to express themselves, the creativity and yearning for freedom of a people would find expression in a new musical form—jazz. New Orleans became the birthplace of the great American music and many of its pioneering practitioners.

With a new appreciation of the history and people of Tremé, the footage of the devastation of hurricane Katrina is all the more gut-wrenching. What the forces of man could not destroy the forces of nature could very well doom Tremé. Elie is fortunate that his home suffered minor damage and was not flooded but most of his neighbours are not so lucky. Many of the documentary's participants are scattered across the country and their return is doubtful.

If you don't get an opportunity to see this film at the festival, be on the look out for broadcast of Faubourg Tremé on a PBS television station.