NEWS

A Film Emerges From Katrina’s Troubled Waters

By turns uplifting and sobering, the documentary provides a window into the lives of poor black Louisianans in general and an extraordinarily resourceful young couple in particular.

Film makers overcome ‘Katrina fatigue’

Not just the year's most riveting documentary film, "Trouble the Water" -- which follows young Hurricane Katrina survivor Kimberly Rivers Roberts in her amazing efforts to rebuild her life -- is also a stirring rebuttal of the "objectivity" mandate in news reporting.

Rising Above the Flood: Kimberly Roberts, Scott Roberts, and Carl Deal

While the 3rd anniversary of Hurricane Katrina recycles the same distant aerial images of families waving for help from houses submerged in a fetid swamp, Carl Deal and Tia Lessin’s Trouble the Water presents a direct, on-the-ground story of people who were literally at the center of the storm. The film effectively uses home video shot throughout the chaos, footage that illustrates with grueling clarity what it was like for so many people who couldn’t afford to leave yet, through innovation and fortitude, endured nonetheless. The film’s power largely comes from this footage and how it seamlessly meshes with that shot by the filmmakers. The result is a work that lets the power of the characters shine through without them seeming like victims. Trouble the Water won Best Documentary at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and opened theatrically in late August. I recently sat down with the subjects of the film, Kim and Scott Roberts, as well as co-director Carl Deal.

Film Shows Close-Up View Of Katrina Survival

Tia Lessin and Kimberly Rivers Roberts speak with NPR's Steve Inskeep about the making of Trouble the Water on Morning Edition. LISTEN

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin Walks Out of Screening of Katrina Documentary “Trouble the Water”

Five minutes into a screening at the Democratic National Convention of the new documentary "Trouble the Water," New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin walked out of the theater. Democracy Now! producer Anjali Kamat reports. Also, Danny Glover talks about "Trouble the Water," and the challenges ahead for activists, regardless of who wins the White House this November. WATCH

Michael Moore’s pals make documentary films

They make movies that deal with unpleasant topics such as war and racism, yet are entertaining and even humorous. They're passionate, mischievously creative, politically liberal. Does this sound like "Michael Moore The Next Generation"? If so, there's a good reason. These filmmakers once worked with Moore on pictures such as "Roger & Me" and "Fahrenheit 9/11." Now they're turning out documentaries of their own.

Carl Deal and Scott Roberts Trouble the Water

Carl Deal and Scott Roberts interviewed by Tavis Smiley about Trouble the Water. LISTEN

Troubling the Water

Between the corporate media circus coverage of the US presidential elections and the "security" arrangements in store for any prospective DNC and RNC protesters, it struck me that there is very little room for anything between spectacle and surveillance these days. Fortunately not everyone is taking this lying down. Today's launch of the film Trouble the Water directed and produced by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal and executive produced by the company I co-founded, Louverture Films, opens up a meaningful space to examine critical and pressing issues that have remained unaddressed and unresolved since the Katrina disaster three years ago to this Sunday.

Kimberly Roberts and Carl Deal on CW11 Morning News

The new documentary Trouble the Water, executive produced by Danny Glover, follows New Orleans residents Kimberly and Scott Roberts as they and their 9th Ward neighbors are trapped in the city during the hurricane and the lack of assistance provided to them. Trouble the Water debuts tonight at the IFC film center. Check out troublethewaterfilm.com for more information. WATCH

Amy Goodman interviews Carl Deal and Tia Lessin

Today, we're joined by the makers of a film that takes us back three years, back inside the hurricane and the many forms of devastation that followed. Trouble the Water is the name of the film. It follows a couple from New Orleans' Ninth Ward, aspiring rap musician Kimberly Rivers Roberts and her husband Scott Roberts, their return home two weeks after the hurricane. But it begins with footage shot by the couple, who documented the approach of the hurricane and the moment the floodwaters began to rise.  WATCH

Trouble the Water on GRITtv

Laura Flanders interviews Danny Glover, Tia Lessin, Carl Deal, and Kimberly and Scott Roberts talk about the upcoming 3rd Anniversary of Katrina, and the film Trouble the Water on GRITtv. WATCH

After the Flood in New Orleans

Director/Producer Tia Lessin and Kimberly and Scott Roberts talk about Trouble the Water and post-Katrina New Orleans on the Leonard Lopate show on WNYC, New York. LISTEN

Black Like Us: A Sneak Peek at New Films

Trouble the Water celebrates the resiliency of the human spirit.

The Angry Flood and the Stories in Its Wake

"Trouble the Water," which won the grand jury prize for best documentary at the Sundance Film Festival and opens on Friday, is one of the best reviewed of these movies. It is also perhaps the one that most shrewdly navigates a problem that to some extent bedevils all filmmakers who take on this fraught subject: how to reconcile their outsider perspectives with the experiences of those who lived through the hurricane.

‘Trouble the Water’ documents Katrina

It was a moment of serendipity in the world of hurt known as Hurricane Katrina.

Filmmakers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal had gone to Louisiana to make a nonfiction film about National Guard troops returning from Iraq to deal with the hurricane's aftermath - only to have their filming permission revoked by military authorities. Then they met Kimberly and Scott Roberts.

Trouble the Water on KPFK Pacifica, Los Angeles

Host Sonali Kolhatkar interviews Trouble the Water Directors Tia Lessin & Carl Deal, and Kimberly and Scott Roberts, ahead of the Los Angeles release. LISTEN

iW NEWS | Impact Film Festival Sets Slate for Upcoming U.S. Presidential Conventions

July 26, 2008, The Impact Film Festival has announced its slate of films set to screen for lawmakers, candidates and delegates at the upcoming national political conventions.

iW NEWS | Zeitgeist Takes “Trouble the Water” for Summer Release

Zeitgeist has picked up Sundance doc prize winner “Trouble the Water” by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal for a late summer release, the company unveiled Tuesday.

Sundance duo win at Film Frame: ‘Water,’ ‘Wire’ pull prizes at event

Two Sundance doc winners took top prizes at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, N.C. Carl Deal and Tia Lessin’s caught-on- tape doc of Hurricane Katrina, “Trouble the Water,” won the Anne Dellinger Grand Jury Award…

True Stories: Documentaries outshined dramas at this year’s Sundance

New Directors/ New Films: Part Two

Nothing you’ve watched on the Weather Channel–all those tornado docs at their swirling worst–prepares you for the gripping horror of Kim’s little camcorder watching Katrina’s nighttime floodwaters climbing the front steps of their home and then climbing their living room walls as the family hauls emergency rations up into their windowless attic. Kim Roberts is a large woman of indeterminate age, and she narrates their desperate situation in real time with a mix of spontaneous anger, courage and reason. She grabs hold of this movie for dear life, and she never lets go.

Survivors have red-carpet day: Activists at summit cheer Katrina documentary stars

New Orleans residents who may have gone unnoticed on city streets pre-Katrina basked in celebrity Thursday afternoon at the National Summit on Equitable Development, Social Justice and Smart Growth.

Hundreds of people from 35 states and five countries attending the summit at the Sheraton Hotel in New Orleans cheered a 9th Ward couple — Kim and Scott Roberts, stars of an award-winning documentary, “Trouble the Water.” A ballroom at the hotel boomed with applause after the showing of a 15-minute excerpt from the movie, which recently captured the 2008 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize.

‘Trouble the Water’ Sells International Rights

One of my favorite films at Sundance this year was Trouble the Water. The film, directed by Michael Moore producers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, was a collaboration with Kimberly Rivers Roberts and Scott Roberts, two residents of New Orleans who were trapped by floodwaters during Hurricane Katrina when the levees broke a few blocks from their home. Kim Roberts, who like many of New Orleans’ poorer residents, didn’t have the resources to evacuate when the hurricane hit, had just purchased a camcorder off the streets for $20 the week before the storm blew in, and she was able to capture some remarkable footage of the hurricane, the flood waters rising, and the aftermath as New Orleans residents tried to rebuild their lives.

Sundance Honors Films with Political Edge

“Both Tia Lessin and Carl Deal’s Trouble the Water, which won the documentary Grand Jury prize, and Courtney Hunt’s Frozen River, which won the dramatic Grand Jury prize, are small, personal films that reel back independent filmmaking’s more recent, polished and well-financed art-house star vehicles to the early days of Sundance social realism, with stories about women, blacks and native Americans having to walk a tightrope to survive.”

‘Water,’ ‘River’ and Sundance

“Sundance handed out some frozen bon-bons to end the festival, including the Grand Jury Prize in documentary to “Trouble the Water” with the dramatic nod going to “Frozen River.” It was a big week for the “Trouble the Water,” the remarkable documentary directed by Tia Lessen and Carl Deal that traced the human and natural consequences of Hurricane Katrina. An audience favorite, the premier included a remarkable appearance by a very pregnant Kimberly Roberts, the subject of the documentary who used a vid cam to chronicle her trip through the hurricane and it’s aftermath.”

‘Trouble the Water:’ Sundance Winner

A great year for water

[a] remarkable story of community resilience in the face of government indifference

Must-See Films at the Sundance Festival

Sundance’s Trouble the Water Reveals New Orleans Heroine

“Ten days after Hurricane Katrina, documentary filmmakers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal were all set to shoot a film about National Guard troops being redeployed more than 7000 miles from Iraq to New Orleans to cope with the storm’s aftermath. Then the duo got shut down . . . “We wanted to find a different story of Katrina that wasn’t the one filtering through news media and newsrooms.” They found a doozy. (UPDATE: Trouble the Water won the doc jury prize at Sundance.)”

Live Interview with John Sloss, Tia Lessin and Carl Deal

Trouble the Water Documentary: Interview with Danny Glover (includes video clip)

Culture Vulture: Down-to-earth celebrity exists at Sundance

One of the strangest and most gratifying dynamics of the Sundance Film Festival is the way it bestows instant mini-celebrity on the previously unknown folks who appear in its documentaries . . .

Hurricane Katrina is not over: A conversation with the filmmakers behind ‘Trouble the Water’

Sundance 2008: Tia Lessin of ‘Trouble the Water’

Filmmakers chase down one story, stumble onto another

Some of the most memorable footage in this year’s Sundance Film Festival may not have been shot with fancy equipment or by a professional filmmaker.

During the summer of 2005, Kimberly Rivers, a resident of the Ninth Ward in New Orleans, bought a video camera on the street for $10 and used it to record her struggle to survive Hurricane Katrina.

Rivers had never used a video camera before but knew her community was facing a disaster of historic proportions. In the hours leading up to the hurricane, and even as the floodwaters poured into her home, she trained it on her neighbors, saying to them at one point, “I am showing the world that we had a world here before the storm.”

With a trembling hand on the camera, Rivers and her husband, Scott Roberts, to climb into a tiny crawl space under their roof to weather the storm. They also gather a few stragglers, offering them shelter, food and encouragement while the wind howls and their street becomes a raging river.

Compelling footage, definitely. But Rivers’ journey from that crawl space to the Sundance Film Festival is equally amazing.

Watching the news coverage of Hurricane Katrina from their home in New York, veteran documentary filmmakers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, who produced Michael Moore’s film “Fahrenheit 9/11,” felt compelled to get to New Orleans as quickly as possible.

According to Lessin, after experiencing the destruction of the World Trade Center they realized the best way to make sense of what was happening was to use their filmmaking skills.

“When Katrina came we were glued to our TVs. We were seething and upset and we wanted to do something,” said Lessin.

Deal and Lessin decided to focus on the Louisiana National Guardsmen from New Orleans who were returning from Iraq only to find their own communities had been ruined by the hurricane.

“Many of those soldiers were going from one war zone to another,” said Lessin.
In the process of covering that story, however, Lessin and Deal stumbled across Kimberly Rivers and Scott Roberts.

That chance encounter is where “Trouble the Water” begins.

As the filmmakers wrapped up with the soldiers, Deal decided to take a camera crew across the street to a large sports arena that was being used as a Red Cross center.

“Minutes after we arrived, Kim walks into the frame and essentially never left,” Lessin remembers.

Rivers looks straight into Deal’s also camera and says, “This needs to be worldwide nobody ain’t got what I got.”

“It was kind of magical. Their gift as storytellers was immediately apparent,” said Lessin. “She knew it was a historic moment. She wanted it out there.”

But Lessin and Deal recognized that the couples’ saga didn’t end when the flood waters receded. When Kimberly and Scott finally return to their street after the storm, the neighborhood is uninhabitable.

Slipping past police barricades under Lessin and Deal’s journalist credentials, Rivers and Roberts are among the first 9th Ward residents to see the extent of the disaster. In the ensuing weeks, the filmmakers accompany Rivers, Roberts and other hurricane survivors as they navigate through a morass of red tape and overwhelmed relief agencies.

Lessin and Deal’s footage shows that, essentially, many New Orleans residents were left to fend for themselves. And Rivers and Roberts’s case is a heartwarming example of how families helped each other, even though, as Rivers says, “We had nothing left except our lives.”

That is the story that Lessin and Deal follow with a professional film crew, but still very much under Rivers’ influence. “She told us to ‘keep it real,’” says Lessin, adding that some of the music in the film was composed and performed by Rivers who is revealed to be a talented hip-hop artist.

Along the way, Rivers and Roberts are uprooted again by Hurricane Rita and are shuffled from one aid agency to the next. In a particularly poignant scene, the two explain how they and fellow storm survivors were told to walk to a local decommissioned naval base for temporary shelter, only to be turned away, they say, at gunpoint.

Lessin and Deal said they worked hard to blend Rivers’ footage with their own. As a result “Trouble the Water” tells a much bigger story than one couple’s experience during Hurricane Katrina.

Ultimately, Deal thinks audiences will see their film as an “inspirational story of hope and survival.”

“We believe this film can transform people,” said Deal. “It is a very life-affirming film.”