Lower Ninth Ward

A meditation on a neighborhood that once was.

"When Ed Pincus and I spent over a month in New Orleans, Louisiana to film the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we would often return to the "Lower Ninth". Continually, we were struck by the overwhelming sadness yet poignant resilience of the neighborhood.  Traces of a vibrant community dominated every scene, every porch. Although we would periodically run into residents surveying the damage and collecting salvageable items from the wreckage, we knew that on New Year's day 2006, four months after the storm, the city would officially allow its residents to return. That morning Ed and I arrived early to discover the streets empty, covered with a thick fog. With both our cameras rolling simultaneously, we filmed for over an hour before people started to arrive. Some of this footage would later become the opening shots for THE AXE IN THE ATTIC but we were always hoping to experiment with a short — an immersive, tone poem experience." - Lucia Small

LOWER NINTH WARD (8 mins.) premiered at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in 2008.