Filmmakers Elizabeth Wood and Gabriel Nusssbaum came to New Orleans six months after Katrina to help teach a video class at the just-reopened Singleton middle school. The kids knew nothing about documentary filmmaking, but in the weeks that followed they used the Sony digital cameras they were handed to make a movie out of their experience.
Wade in the Water, Children (out September on DVD) is mostly composed of the students’ footage, juxtaposed with archival shots of the Crescent City under water. The kids interview each other about the sadness of losing every material thing they owned and seek the still fresh recollections of older relatives. One aged aunt stoically reports, “I started back to drinkin’.” She had barely survived after three days without water.
Wade in the Water is a record of psychological and physical damage. The gaps in the rubble indicate places where homes had already been bulldozed. Some children visit the places where they once lived, usually reduced to a shambles of mold, dry rot and wreckage. Middle school shenanigans is juggled with anger. In one scene, the kids perform a vituperative anti-Bush rap.
