A New Katrina Doc From Robert Greenwald
September 6th, 2007 by Larry Smith
Robert Greenwald, the filmmaker behind Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, WAL-MART: The High Cost of Low Price, and other muckraking documentaries with feverish followings, has just released a film about New Orleans, When the Saints Go Marching In. Saints tells the stories of some of the tens of thousands of people who, plain and simple, just want to return home. These are folks still scattered across the country, many in FEMA trailers, still more wondering when the 77,000 rental units will begin to be rebuilt. Two years after Katrina, we know that New Orleans is still hurting badly; yet person to person, story to story, Saints offers a painfully personal perspective on the assault on the humanity of a city. Here’s a clip:
Heartbreaking. Infuriating.
Even though I’m telling a story of six individual New Orleanians, it’s easy to forget that those tens of thousands of destroyed homes held human souls, each with their unique history, dreams, and aspirations. Let us never forget.
From the clip: “It’s good to know that when your house is 30 feet underwater, the government will be there to hang you out to dry.”