Each year, the New Orleans Film Festival (NOFF) curates and cultivates the finest filmmakers and artists in the world for a week-long celebration of all things cinema. With films that range from the heights of auteurist excellence (“Is This Thing On”, “Jay Kelly”, “Wake Up Dead Man”) to feature films scrapped together with duct tape and passion from filmmakers just across the river, NOFF brings it all together, in essence proving that all cinema is worthy cinema and the power of art is in it’s sharing.
There are over 150 films ready to be screened this weekend, and it would be impossible to provide a summation of them all. So I decided instead to focus my efforts on the Louisiana-made films, the ones for us and by us; crafted from the collective imaginations of our home and culture; the Cinéma Louisiane.
Michalopoulos – The Art Of Celebration
(Documentary Feature)
James Michalopoulos exemplifies the cross-section of modern and traditional New Orleans; with his art as vibrant and unapologetic as the culture he adopted and fell in love with when he came to the city for the first time in the 1970s. The documentary is a true celebration of his work, both artistic and cultural, chronicling from his early days busking in The Quarter to his much heralded Jazz Fest poster series and time spent returning to nature in the French countryside. The most impactful stretch of the film details the effects that his philanthropic efforts have had on the artistic community of New Orleans, a bohemian subculture of poets, painters, musicians, and creatives that would slowly be dying out without the patronage of someone like Michalopoulos. Though the film does lack any real sense of narrative structure, opting instead to hop from topic to topic without much desire to craft a story beyond a portraiture of the preeminent artist of his generation, “Michalopoulos – The Art Of Celebration” was an eye opening insight into the face behind the swirling columns and dazzling colors that are as much a part of New Orleans as the music in it’s streets.
Shelby
(Documentary Feature)
Somewhere on the edge of Lake Pontchartrain, there is a man who has lived alone in the swamp for decades. Plying his trade of salvaging cypress logs from the forgotten corners of long-lost bayous, this man is an enigma: part treasure hunter, part teller of tall tales, part lost soul, often paranoid and always congenial, a generous man and a terrifying one. His name is Shelby.
The film, directed by Daniel Fiore, follows Shelby through what turns out to be the latter part of his life, as encroaching disease, economic unease, and his own criminal past begin to creep up on him. What begins as the hunt for a swamp-bound wild man turns out to be something much more gentle and conflicted; the story of someone desperate for love and only able to find it in solitude. A fascinating film of an endlessly engrossing man, the movie’s one downfall is its incessant use of generative AI to fill in the gaps of Shelby’s stories, or parts of the narrative that Fiore was seemingly unable to film. It’s a real shame that the story of a man who made a life for himself in the natural world could, on the one hand, be crafted with such intimate care while also allowing itself to be bastardized by utilizing soulless, creatively bankrupt footage of ghosts in the machine. I just think the film, and Shelby for that matter, deserved better.
West of Greatness: The Story of the Westwego Muscle Boys
(Narrative Feature)
Heralding from the West Bank, Jared Cliff LaReau’s half-documentary/half-narrative feature “West of Greatness” is a truly heartwarming, devastating, and quietly poignant portrayal of the blind madness of hope in the face of illogical odds. Following the fictional Westwego “Greatest Gains” muscle man competition, which I did Google to confirm that it wasn’t real, the film tracks a pair of young men seeking to win the coveted prize for glory and hope of monetary respite from the doldrums of their day-to-day. Jerome is an actor hoping to escape the narrow confines of Westwego for Los Angeles, while Terry hopes to help find a better place for him and his sister, who suffered brain damage from a recent car accident, to live away from their alcoholic father. There’s only one problem: both of these guys are skinnier than twigs and going up against established muscled gym bros. The odds couldn’t be stacked higher against them, and yet they persist. The movie follows their journeys over the course of a year as they become fast friends and learn that strength is more than muscle deep.
A scrappy production stitched together with care and affection for its characters, I left the film having greatly enjoyed my time with the Westwego Muscle Boys and hoping beyond hope that each of them finds their happiness one way or another.
That’s just a small sample of all the wonderful programming taking place at the New Orleans Film Festival this weekend. Come out for a showing or two and witness for yourself the cinematic splendor that only Louisiana can offer.
You’ll be glad you did!
Get your tickets today HERE!
