Patois Film Festival brings human rights home

Patois Film Festival brings human rights home

By Zoe Sullivan

Contributing Writer

The seventh annual Patois: New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival opens this Wednesday, April 13, at The New Orleans Museum of Art with the documentary “Hot Coffee.” As its name implies, the festival aims to raise human rights and social justice issues in New Orleans and beyond. Two documentaries being presented were nominated for Aca­demy Awards, while two ot­her films will be premiering. In the spirit of activism with which the festival was foun­ded, discussions will follow each screen­ing to help audience members connect with others and become active around the issues raised. The festival features films, discussions and music around these themes that relate to the New Orleans experience: Music as resistance, food justice, and the global South.

The opening documentary, by attorney Susan Saladoff, looks at how ordinary citizens’ access to the courts is being stripped. Gianna Chachere, the festival’s director, told The Louisiana Weekly that this film was selected because of its relevance to Louisianians in the wake of the BP disaster. “I call it cancer money,” Chachere said of the BP claims process. “The five grand they’ve been offering people doesn’t even begin to cover medical expenses or loss of wages. Or even the fact that I haven’t had a proper oyster po-boy. That’s worth something, isn’t it?” Chachere also said that Monique Harden of Advocates for Environmental Justice will speak to contextualize the connection between the issue of tort reform raised in the documentary and the claims experience in Louisiana.

Saladoff gave her motives for making the film. “We’re giving up our right to access the court system, which is our third branch of government, and we only have three.” She described the title as “a reference to the most infamous case in the world, the McDonald’s hot coffee case,” explaining that “almost nobody knows the truth behind the case. And nobody knows why they think what they think and how much was spent in public advertising.” Saladoff said that terms like “jackpot justice” were coined after this case “to convince people that we have a system that’s broken. The sole reason for that is to convince people to give up their rights to access the courts. [But if we don’t have access to the courts, when] people make defective products, no one can hold them accountable.”

In another film about holding institutions accountable, Thursday evening a documentary called “In the Land of the Free” highlighting the case of the Angola 3 will be screened at Warren Easton High School. To silence those struggling non-violently for humane treatment in Louisiana’s most notorious prison, three young Black men were confined to solitary over three decades ago. Solitary confinement has been found to have serious effects on prisoners’ mental health and extended periods of isolation are considered inhumane. Robert King, one of the three men imprisoned, was released in 2001. King will attend the screening and participate in a discussion following the film. He told The Louisiana Weekly that his goal is to: “Secure the release of Herman [Wallace] and Albert [Woodfox]. Our focus has always been one of inclusiveness. There are many people… wrongfully convicted under the same circumstances as Herman and Albert.”

One of the World premieres happening at the Patois Film Festival is Big Chief Brian Harrison Nel­son’s film “Keeper of the Flame.” The movie is his thesis project as he completes a master’s degree in film at the University of Southern California. The movie is based on his experience of receiving leadership of the Guardians of the Flame Mardi Gras Indian tribe from his grandfather when he was only 16. Nelson told The Louisi­ana Weekly that he is “…really excited and honored to be a part of the Patois film festival, and…I’m honored to be able to contribute to the Mardi Gras Indian culture in my own special way. I’m a Guardian of the Flame, and to me, doing this film, “Keeper of the Flame,” is part of guarding that flame and keeping it going.” Nelson also explained that making this film himself was a way of claiming his story.

“It’s all of us taking our power back and taking control of our cultural destiny. Tak[ing] control of how we are represented in the media. The reason I became a filmmaker was to help others who ordinarily don’t have a voice, but to help them tell their own stories.”

Connecting to the Food Justice theme is the documentary “Cafe­teria Man” about New Orleans native Tony Geraci. Geraci was a restaurateur in New Orleans and moved from owning his own business to working as a food broker, helping companies sell their products. After an accident that immobilized him for a while, his children’s school invited him to work with them. Ger­aci told The Louisi­ana Weekly that he applied his business skills and helped to develop a child-focused food sys­tem that was heal­thy and tasty. One of the initiatives he launched were student-designed meals.

“We would have week-long contests with a fifth-grade class, the class that had the best participation in the meals that week, won. Within a year, we had created a five-week menu cycle of student-designed meals,” Geraci said in an interview.

Geraci also acknowledged the financial interests at stake. “Just the public schools in the state of Maryland, they purchase over $800 million a year in food. This is a multi-billion dollar industry nationally. But there are a lot of companies that figured out that this makes sense to try and be part of the solution to the problem.”

Beyond the numbers, Geraci believes that there are educational opportunities involved with new food systems models. “The only reason for the existence of schools is for kids, and we’ve forgotten that….[They’re like an] employment agency, and all kinds of other vehicles other than teaching. I was a lousy student… I didn’t understand chemistry until I saw bread rise. I’m convinced that kids learn that way all over the world, so why not facilitate that opportunity?”