Carl Deal and Tia Lessin's documentary Trouble the Water (2008) screens this evening as part of the Museum of Modern Art's ongoing series “When the World Broke Open: Katrina and Its Afterlives,” curated by Maya S. Cade and K. Austin Collins. The film consists of direct testimonies from Hurricane Katrina survivors and is anchored in home-video footage shot by Kimberly Rivers Roberts. While Dean and Lessin first intended to document the deployment of the National Guard in New Orleans, they changed their directorial focus when they met Kim and her husband, Scott, at a Red Cross Shelter. Turning their lens on the community taking care of each other, Dean and Lessin’s film details how people in New Orleans exhibited fortitude and adaptability to secure their own survival. "We truly under siege,” Kim says, recording the hellacious storm as it multiplies in force, “Nobody left with no valuables, nothin' but our lives.”
Throughout Trouble the Water, Deal and Lessin contrast Kim’s footage of her family helping their neighbors through the storm—they save several lives by bringing people up to their home’s attic and then help people get out of New Orleans by assisting them with transportation—with live TV coverage of then-President George Bush’s and FEMA leaders’ televised empty promises. It’s all puckered lips and opaque smiles on TV, alongside sensationalist media reporting that reinforces stereotypes of Black criminality. Kim’s footage, alongside interviews conducted by Deal and Lessin, reveal what it was like for people who couldn’t afford to leave New Orleans at the height of the hurricane. And the juxtapositions made throughout the documentary emphasize just how distant the state apparatus was from the situation, showing how it abandoned the city in a moment of crisis and forced people to fend for themselves.
Kim reveals herself as a spectacular life force in the film; she brings levity to the situation by delivering dark, humorous jokes and freestyle raps. The night before the storm, Kim introduces the viewer to her community, asking her neighbors and family members to share their fears and plans for the storm. Her buoyancy shows just how much she loves the neighborhood she wants to document. Trouble the Water summons a warm-blooded and kindred sense of vitality. While it deals with the horror of New Orleans flooding, it remains fixed on Kim and Scott’s actions to create refuge. Early on, crowded in her own attic with her neighbors, Kim points to a small cooler and says, “What’s mine is yours, have anything you want.” This offering, made despite the fact that Kim and Scott have lost everything around them, is key to the film’s thesis: that the care New Orleans’ residents had for one another was in sharp contrast with the mockery and aggression levelled at the city by state officials.
Trouble the Water screens this evening, September 15, and on September 19, at the Museum of Modern Art as part of the series “When the World Broke Open: Katrina and Its Afterlives.”
