Louisiana filmmakers Glen Pitre and Michelle Benoit screen their 2006 film on New Orleans jazz man Don Vappie. Vappie’s sidemen are scattered by Hurricane Katrina, his flooded-out mom is sleeping on his couch, and his 8-year-old grandson is clamoring to join the band. Tour the front lines of a devastated city’s cultural rebirth offstage, where race is infinitely more nuanced than black or white, backstage, where which instrument you play can be a political statement, and joyously onstage, where the only thing that matters is music.
Prior to the showing of American Creole will be the debut of a brand new, locally produced animated music video, “St. James Infirmary,” presented by Preservation Hall Recordings. Directed by Lafayette-based teacher and animator James Tancill, the music video for the Preservation Hall / King Britt remix of “St. James Infirmary,” by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, is an animated romp in the style of Max Fleischer (Betty Boop) that plays out like a storybook caper set against a backdrop of beloved New Orleans characters and institutions both old and new.
The free film series, Film @ the Center, is presented by the Acadiana Center for the Arts, the Center for Cultural and Eco-Tourism, and the Media Arts Workshop at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
American Creole and "St. James Infirmary" screen on Sunday, March 21 at 2 p.m. For more information on Film @ the Center visit AcadianaCenterfortheArts.org/At-The-Center or call 233-7060.
The 2010 Film @ the Center schedule is:
March 21 – American Creole (2006) April 18 - Short Circuit Traveling Film Festival May 16 – UL Lafayette Media Arts Workshop Student Showcase June 20 – All The King’s Men (1949) July 18 – Spend It All (1971) August 15 – Against the Tide: The Story of the Cajun People of Louisiana (2000) September 19 – Low and Behold (2007) October 17 – The Blob (1988) November 21 - 48th Annual Ann Arbor Film Festival (Film program to be announced in March 2010) December 19 – Louisiana Story and Louisiana Story: The Reverse Angle (1948)
David Calhoun and Elizabeth “EB” Brooks are the first two employees of Lafayette Central Park Inc., the nonprofit charged with turning Lafayette Consolidated Government’s 100-acre Johnston Street Horse Farm property into a passive public park. Calhoun was named executive director, and Brooks is director of planning and design.
Is it a crime for citizens to photograph, video, or take notes of a police officer in the line of duty, or a right protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution? Locally, such activity, as witnessed recently, will at the very least result in a night spent behind bars.
At Thursday's State of the Economy luncheon, LEDA President and CEO Gregg Gothreaux said PXP has already quietly hired 180 people for its Broussard expansion.
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
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