NEW ORLEANS JAZZ FUNERAL

Aug 10

NEW ORLEANS JAZZ FUNERAL
Directed / Produced by Ashley Hunt
The Corrections Documentary Project
2002 / 18 minutes

NEW ORLEANS JAZZ FUNERAL is an eighteen minute video depicting a grassroots political protest in New Orleans, on September 8th, 2001. Orchestrated primarily by parents whose children are imprisoned in Louisiana’s notorious youth prisons, the video presents an example of protest that steps outside the vocabularies and habits of typical protest.

Here, parents appalled by the constant abuse of their children decide to register their protest through a cultural form of celebration and mourning which has itself endured dislocation from African roots and centuries of repression.

Here a community sings and dances its way to City Hall behind a marching band, setting off a spark which would later become a four year campaign to close the state’s most notorious youth prison: the Tallulah Correctional Facility. (This is the first of two videos dealing with this campaign; see also CLOSE TALLULAH NOW!)

WATCH NOW

Special thanks to:

Avis Brock
Laura Jones
Mary Matthews
Friends & Families of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children
The Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana

VIDEO SUMMARIES

CORRECTIONS

A one hour documentary about the privatization of U.S. prisons, where privatization reveals itself as just one piece of a larger puzzle in which a number of politicians, businesses and state interests desire a growing prison system.

A PRISON IN THE FIELDS

Asking one of the biggest questions surrounding today’s prison expansion, "Where do new prisons get built?", this 20-minute documentary explores why new prisons are being built and why they are typically placed in remote, rural communities.

ATTICA: ROOTS OF RESISTANCE

To better understand what struggles we face today, we can look to history to help us interpret the present and our place within it. A brief yet compelling portrait of one of the U.S.’ most infamous rebellions, and a most brutal example of state repression that was deployed to destroy it.

LOCKDOWNS UP

A nine minute video essay based upon the optimistic stock projections announced to Wall Street stock analysts by a private prison company, when Cornell Company made public its hopes that private prison companies may get fat government contracts to build interment camps for Arab Americans.

NEW ORLEANS JAZZ FUNERAL

A grassroots protest dances its way through New Orleans on September 8th, 2001. Led by parents fed up with their children’s abuse at the hands of the state's notorious youth prison, this video documents their demand to shut it down.

CLOSE TALLULAH NOW!

The second video following a campaign to shut down the notorious Tallulah youth prison in Northern Louisiana, following a movement of parents, community and advocates through public hearings where bereaved parents get the chance to spell out their frustrations to law makers and demand a prison be closed.

AN INCIDENT AT THE CALLIOPE

An accidental circustance of counter-surveillance to keep state power in check, it is a brief glimpse of the flexing of state power in communities whose voice is more criminalized than listened to and respected.

ORGANIZING CRITICAL RESISTANCE SOUTH

The first of two videos about Critical Resistance's Southern Conference, ORGANIZING CRITICAL RESISTANCE SOUTH is an 18 minute piece that follows the 2 year organizing process leading up to the conference. It was initially screened on the conference's opening night.

THE CRITICAL RESISTANCE SOUTH CONFERENCE

3,000 people from around the South and the U.S. pour into New Orleans’ Tremé community to share stories, responses and analyses of the growing prison system which affects so many in so many different but connected ways. One of the seminal Critical Resistance conferences that built today’s movement.

INTERVIEW WITH CURTIS MUHAMMAD

What begins as a simple dialogue on why a labor union for textile workers would support an anti-prison conference expands into a eloquent analysis of how globalization affects jobs and economy, how capital flight frames crime policy, and how race, gender and class prejudice the vision and potential of the Left.

I WON’T DROWN ON THAT LEVEE AND YOU AIN’T GONNA BREAK MY BACK

Take a minute to write an introduction that is short, sweet, and to the point. If you sell something, use this space to describe it in detail and tell us why we should make a purchase. Tap into your creativity. You’ve got this.

Ashley Hunt https://ashleyhunt.info

NEW ORLEANS JAZZ FUNERAL

MORE

RETURN TO FULL COLLECTION

THE CORRECTIONS DOCUMENTARY PROJECT

Contact