Last week, I attended the New Orleans Film Festival in person and virtually. While the Oscar-qualifying festival boasted some high-profile films that have circumnavigated the festival circuit — such as the triumphant feature Nickel Boys (2024) or the compelling documentary Rebel Nun (2024) — NOFF was also notable for its array of highlighted southern filmmakers, whose work drove the program and illuminated the community in which the festival took place.
Below are some especially vibrant films from the festival, including audience award-winners announced on October 30 and delightful surprises from across the programming.
Roleplay (2024)
Directed by Katie Matthews
Katie Matthews and Alexandra J. Elam spoke to me about their experience filming and being filmed for the documentary. Roleplay follows a theater troupe from September 2018 to September 2019 as the members write and act out their lived experiences as Tulane University students. The documentary draws its eponymous title from the resulting play.
“Posing urgent questions about the toxic legacies imparted on the next generation, Roleplay explores the roles we play as we grow into who we are: how they hurt us, heal us, and shape who we become,” reads the film’s summary.
In a fascinating double-act, the documentary itself unfolds alongside its participants as they write the script that will become Roleplay, the performance. On Matthews’s end, following about 15 subjects — stories, dialogue, and sound — was logistically difficult. The camera occasionally whips side to side, eager to capture those spur-of-the-moment interactions, an inclusion that places the viewer more immediately into the step-by-step rendering of the documentary.
Elam wrote her portion of the script based on her experiences of racism at Tulane, crafting a scene in which she rejects a friend’s request to go to a party hosted by a frat that boasts a confederate flag outside their house. Other actors enact conversations or situations regarding sexual assault, such as an unsure gray-area hook-up at a party.
Sometimes, however, real life crept into the performance space. The actor working with Elam in that scene about the frat mentioned that her boyfriend was part of the frat that the scene was based on. The real-time conversation where that actor tells Elam about her boyfriend plays out like a scene we meant supposed to see, the camera running just long enough to capture their conversation.
Elam said that because of the intensity of the scene she created, she had to maintain a deliberate boundary between her art and her reality.
“I wasn’t really uncomfortable with being on camera, but I did realize that … being in a vulnerable space, you can become a bit more self-aware,” said Elam in an interview with The Rolling Tape. “We had to make the conscious decision to really sit down and maintain that firm barrier–we can’t allow ourselves to take this personality.”
The film is also absent of time markers. With its pre-COVID filming, the subjects do not wear masks or socially distance. Daily or yearly politics never interfere in the documentary.
Matthews said this decision to avoid obvious time markers, like political events, was deliberate, even though there were conversations between subjects about politics and sexual assault during the year that the documentary observed the troupe.
From a viewer’s perspective, the absence of political timeframes or conversations also suggests a timelessness to the play’s subject matter, that it remains relevant now — most certainly in the post-Roe world that states like Louisiana, which has a near-total abortion ban, Matthews added.
“All these issues are directly connected to womens’ lives and to reproductive health,” Matthews said.
I Love You AllWays (2024)
Directed by Stuart Sox
Other documentaries focused on COVID’s impact on the New Orleans community, particularly the documentary feature I Love You AllWays. The documentary — which won the runner-up Southern Feature Audience Award — follows the New Orleans LGBTQ+ cabaret and club AllWays Lounge during the waves of COVID lockdowns and reopenings.
Director Stuart Sox said he had long known and worked with AllWays, a club known for its burlesque and drag shows, and that he was first drawn to document its pandemic-era peep shows. Viewers outside the lounge watched local performers through the window of the lounge — one way the business stayed afloat amid the pandemic and devastating hurricanes.
During my interview with Sox at the festival, he said, “My filmmaker brain turned on,” when he heard AllWays was doing the COVID peep shows. “Like, ‘I don’t know what this could be, but I should go there and film.’”
In particular, the documentary follows the lounge’s owner Zalia BeVille, whose eccentric and caring personality shines bright through the screen. She radiated in times of celebration, hardship, and the mundanity of changing out the monthly events schedule or painting the outside of the lounge’s building.
“I became also myself, a queer artist, part of this community,” Sox said.
Shorts
Louisiana had its own shorts programming, with the comedic selections a particularly strong addition to the festival.
“These New Orleans–made narrative short films offer some levity and laughs, showcasing some of the impressive filmmaking talent here in Louisiana,” the festival page for the “Louisiana Shorts: Beignet” reads.
Thirst Trap, directed by Samuel Aguirre-Kelly, is a comedic vampiric take on the horrors of online dating. Our New Orleans heroine, bitten by a bat, goes on a bloody murdering spree as she transforms from late-night tour guide to hungry vampire and serial…dater, eager to find a companion and another local vampire. Female-driven and hilariously written, the short feature took home the Louisiana Narrative Short Audience Award.
Other excellent magical comedy was on display in the hilarious Game Day Ritual, directed by Alejandro De Los Rios, and the bewitching Bywater Coven November New Moon Admin Convening, directed by Jane Geisler, which features a particularly idiosyncratic quartet of witches trudging through a witchy monthly agenda, including social media qualms and local wizard rivalries.
More from the 2024 Festival…
You can also read my full thoughts on Taste the Revolution (2024) and Rebel Nun (2024) now!
Article Courtesy of Arleigh Rodgers
Images Courtesy of Arleigh Rodgers
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