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If you haven't seen "Louisiana Story," it's well worth queuing up in Netflix. Flaherty, who also gave us "Nanook of the North" (1922!), is a pioneer of documentary filmmaking. "Louisiana Story" examined the impact of an oil drilling barge on an optimistic young Cajun boy, his trapper family and their Acadian community. The plot conflict involves the capping of a well.
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Historically speaking, "Louisiana Story" is as essential to American movie history as it is ethically problematic. And that enduring critical conflict, in my eyes, is what makes it indispensible to today's documentary filmmakers.
Dave Walker, TV columnist for The Times-Picayune, has an insightful short piece about its history as industrial propaganda. Walker spoke to Tika Laudun, the director of "Louisiana Story: The Reverse Angle," who suggested that the 1948 docudrama's general view of the oil industry and environmentalism was a reflection of midcentury ideas about "moving forward."
What's more interesting, as reported by writer Ben Sandmel for Imagine Louisiana, is that the film's young star, J.C. Boudreaux, is now 72 and facing a new beginning. The article begins: "J.C. Boudreaux's FEMA trailer sits the end of a gravel road in the hamlet of Sweet Lake, southeast of Lake Charles, the insides seeming all the more cramped by the wide open skies and endless expanse of prairie outside. Like thousands of others in south Louisiana, Boudreaux, 72 and his wife Regina, are starting over. Their home in Cameron was swept away in Hurricane Rita, just as their first home was lost to Hurricane Audrey decades ago."
Both articles are well worth reading.
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