[StBernard] StBP Documentary

[Westley Annis]

Greetings St Bernard Parish and friends,

Myra Spence from Do Your Part, Inc. here. I am writing to share a little bit
about a series of documentaries coming out of StBP's. Our first documentary
was released in January and very well received. The second has been shot and
will be released mid March. Already I can't wait to do the third taking on
some heavier topics. (www.doyourpart.org/documentaries.html)

Adam and I just completed the filming of the second documentary. This one's
focus is on recruiting more volunteers for the Parish. It will be
distributed strategically and widely (unlike the last) to 3,000 churches
across the nation with over 1,000 in attendance. Those churches will be
asked to distribute throughout their community and to the smaller churches.
In addition, we will be strategically getting this doc into the hands of
every college, starting with the top and working our way on down to the
community colleges. We will be sending this to Fortune 500 Companies as well
as government representatives and so on... In addition, the Internet will be
saturated with this documentary, reminding the nation that the residents of
St Bernard Parish want to come home, and they need help!

I am anxious to get the 3rd documentary rolling, as it will cover a wider
perspective and take on some heavier issues.

Backing up a little...
About the first documentary: We did not 'push' this one as we would have
liked to, however it managed to get itself into the hands of tens of
thousands all on it's own. Al Gores site, Current TV requested to host it.
We will submit the next two to them.

Can I brag?
Aside from hundreds of emails of thanks as well as kudos for having an
apolitical, not out for shock value, real peek into StBP, we have received
honorary screenings at festivals around the country and countless reviews.
This is an excerpt from the Independent Weekly
(http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A30026).

...


Buirski was surprised by the relatively apolitical content of the films she
received. While state and federal officials and agencies are criticized in
passing in numerous films, only Adam Finberg's After Katrina: Rebuilding St.
Bernard Parish (9:15 a.m. Friday, Carolina Theatre) concerns itself with the
grueling task of negotiating the rebuilding process. We learn that the most
thorough devastation occurred in St. Bernard Parish, a largely white,
working-class community located just southeast of New Orleans. 

Finberg shot his film in December, when one would expect rebuilding to be in
full swing. Instead, the film reveals a bombed-out community filled with
demoralized and homeless people still struggling to figure out where to
begin. Help and hope are far, far away and the ironies are sometimes too
bitter to bear: The community, which once thrived on the oil industry,
endures a toxic spill of over a million barrels of crude that turned their
home into a toxic waste dump. 

Finberg documents a group of citizens struggling through the days, groping
though the layers of bureaucratic buck-passing and inadequate response. The
post-apocalypse has come to Louisiana, but still they struggle on. One
community leader named Walter Leger, an otherwise bottomless fount of
positive energy, drops his facade of good cheer near the end of the film to
offer a bitter coda: "When people say 'God bless America,' I hope they
really mean all of America, not just the beautiful mountains and the
beautiful seashores but the working communities of America like St. Bernard
Parish. 

"We need this blessing, but we also need help." 

...

I am back in Los Angeles for a while. I will miss the residents that I will
not be lunching with daily with with at Made With Love Cafe.  Please send me
info, your thoughts, opinions- things you think we should know before
preparing our third and 'heaviest' (most important so far) documentary. 

(There are a lot of email addresses I may be missing- please feel free to
forward this along.)

-- 
Myra Spence
Doing My Part
doyourpart.org
818.987.5055 c