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)
In rendering his ruling, District Judge John Trahan all but called the real estate developer a liar for inconsistencies in his accounts of what prompted him to punch a school teacher unconscious.
Frank’s Casing Crew, now doing business as Frank’s International, will make its final appearance on ABiz’s list of the Top 50 Privately Held Companies in Acadiana this year, and once again it will likely be at the top with more than $1 billion in annual revenues. The 75-year-old company specializing in tubular fabrication and installation services to the oil and gas industry plans to offer shares of its stock to the public for the first time.
The defeat, or rather highjacking of House Bill 420 in the final days of this year's Legislative Session, say Reps. Vincent Pierre and Terry Landry, is the result of the propaganda spread by one unidentified local media outlet and an unnamed former state Representative, but nothing to do with the original legislation's lack of checks, balances or details.
City-Parish Council Chairman Brandon Shelvin heaped steady doses of condescending ire on a Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Louisiana executive while failing to reveal his financial ties to a BC/BS rival.
Abbeville native David Primeaux was a popular professor until his death late last year, and while he was successful at camouflaging a dark past, he couldn’t outlive it.
Tehmi Chassion’s failure to recuse himself in the school board’s selection of a group health benefits provider raises ‘serious questions’ on whether he violated state ethics law.
He’s a singer. A songwriter. A piano man. A family man. He’s even got his own Wikipedia entry. He’s David Egan. And he knows ancient secrets about the monolithic stones of Stonehenge that he’s not willing to share.
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