NYWIFT Industry Screening + Q&A: ‘Katrina Babies’

Join NYWIFT for a virtual screening of Katrina Babies  starting Wednesday, December 7th through Monday, December 12th. Followed by a virtual pre-recorded conversation with director Edward Buckles and producer Audrey Rosenberg. Moderated by journalist Soledad O’Brien.

From first-time filmmaker and New Orleans native Edward Buckles, Jr., Katrina Babies offers an intimate look at the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and its impact on the youth of New Orleans. Sixteen years after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, an entire generation still grapples with the lifelong impact of having their childhood redefined by tragedy. Buckles, who was 13 years old during Katrina and its initial aftermath, spent seven years documenting the stories of his peers who survived the storm as children, using his community’s tradition of oral storytelling to open a door for healing and to capture the strength and spirit of his city.

Katrina Babies details the close-knit families and vibrant communities of New Orleans whose lives were uprooted by the 2005 disaster. These American children who were airlifted out of the rising waters, evacuated from their homes to refugee-like centers, or placed in makeshift, temporary living situations, have been neglected. As families were tasked with reintegrating into new communities, having experienced loss, displacement, and lack of support from government officials, the children were left to process their trauma in a wounded, fractured city.

Buckles raises his camera to elevate the voices of his city; utilizing confessional-style footage, home movies, animation, harrowing archival footage, and candid interviews with Katrina survivors, Buckles unearths a reservoir of grief and suppressed emotion. Through these moving, first-hand accounts, Katrina Babies journeys toward healing, not just from the most destructive storm in U.S. history, but also from the multi-generational traumas of being black and disenfranchised in America.  In the face of systemic racism, government neglect, and the unprocessed pain of family separations, the children of Katrina are left to chart their own path toward healing.

Screening Dates: Film available from Monday, December 5th through Thursday, December 12th. (Link will be provided in confirmation) Pre-Recorded Q&A & Film bundled in Cinesend Link

Available Dates: Wednesday, December 7, 2022 thru Monday, December 12, 2022

Location: Cinesend

Price: Free

Register

Panelists

Edward Buckles (Director) is a son of New Orleans. His non-linear path to filmmaking has birthed a brand of visual storytelling – an aesthetically beautiful marriage between fine art and guerilla style documentation. Buckles’ work calls his audience towards remembrance and to see the beauty in imperfections. The ground-breaking filmmaker, director, and producer continues to find inspiration in his people and innovative ways to share the stories of Black communities that would otherwise be lost in the passing of time. His production company, House of the Young Ent. is a beacon in the New Orleans’ arts community and a platform for the culture of the city. 

Audrey Rosenberg (Producer) is a Peabody-Award-winning, Emmy-nominated producer known for her ability to cultivate talent, develop material, and champion projects from inception to release. She is lead producer on the HBO Original documentary Katrina Babies that premiered at Tribeca 2022 in competition and aired on HBO in August. She co-founded Invisible Pictures, a NY-based woman-led production company focused on authentic representation. For Invisible, Audrey produced Bull, which premiered at Cannes 2019; EP’d the series Soul City (with Jeen-Yuhs: A Kanye West Trilogy directors Coodie & Chike) which premiered on Topic in 2020; and produced the feature Long Weekend, which was released by Sony in 2021. Other credits include EP (with Steven Soderbergh) on the Emmy-nominated HBO documentary His Way and EP on HBO’s Emmy-winning By the People: The Election of Barack Obama (with Edward Norton). Audrey was part of the producing team on Douglas McGrath’s Infamous (starring Sandra Bullock, Daniel Craig, and Toby Jones). She produced Sean Gullette’s award-winning feature Traitors, Co-EP’d Dawn Porter’s Trapped, and was Consulting Producer for the multi-award winning and Academy-Award nominated I Am Not Your Negro. Audrey is a member of the Television Academy and the Producers Guild of America and is on the board of New York Women in Film & Television.

Soledad O’Brien (Moderator) is an award-winning documentarian, journalist, speaker, author, and philanthropist, who founded Soledad O’Brien Productions, a multi-platform media production company dedicated to telling empowering and authentic stories on a range of social issues. She anchors and produces the Hearst TV political magazine program Matter of Fact with Soledad O’Brien and is a correspondent for HBO’s Real Sports. Soledad is also a thought leader, with over 1.3 million Twitter followers, who has a national impact through her speeches and numerous documentary films and is the author of two books, her critically acclaimed memoir The Next Big Story and Latino in America. Her most recent productions include The Rebellious Life of Rosa Parks, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, streams on Peacock, and was nominated for the Critics Choice Award. A multi-part series, Black and Missing, airing on HBO, won the Independent Spirit Award. Outbreak and Pandemic in Seattle, was released on Hearst, the World Channel’s Local USA, and Yahoo, where it was awarded a Silver Telly. Other productions have appeared on Discovery Plus, CNN, BET, PBS, and others. She also has a presence on op-ed pages of places like The New York Times and HuffPost, and gave Congressional testimony on media disinformation. She has anchored shows on CNN, MSNBC, and NBC, and reported specials for Fox, BET, A&E, Oxygen, Nat Geo, the PBS NewsHour, WebMD, and Al Jazeera America, among others. O’Brien’s work has been recognized with four Emmy awards, twice with the George Foster Peabody Award, three times with the Gracie Award, which honors women in media, twice with Cine Awards for her work in documentary films and also with an Alfred I. DuPont Award.