“Jason Berry’s film includes wonderful historical footage and profoundly personal interviews. With a lens on jazz funerals, he is capturing the soul of New Orleans in a film that will become a classic.” --
Walter Isaacson, former CEO of CNN News, author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs
Jazz funerals are famous the world over. How did they arise? What do the changes behind these soul-rocking burial pageants tell us about New Orleans? This film explores these rituals as never before, and ensures that current and future generations will understand their history and importance.
The documentary City of a Million Dreams: The Untold Story of Funerals in New Orleans follows burial traditions as a lens on the evolution of New Orleans through floods, hurricanes, the dances of enslaved Africans in Congo Square, wars, epidemics, and séances. Through historical reenactments and larger-than-life modern characters, viewers see the ring of African memory in Congo Square drum circles fuse with the European marching band tradition, and blossom into stunning street pageants of life, death, and rebirth with second line dancers. The film builds on research from Writer/Director/Producer Jason Berry's tenth book, published last November, City of a Million Dreams: A History of New Orleans at Year 300.
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The marching musicians -- and the spontaneous choreographies of "second liners" who follow the band -- take us on a gripping journey through time. Two tradition-bearers guide us: jazzman Michael White and Deb "Big Red" Cotton, a blogger and videographer at second lines. Our other main character, Gregg Stafford, is a veteran of many funerals with Dr. White and also a founding member of the Black Men of Labor, a prominent social aid and pleasure club known for their stylized West African costumes and dancing.
White's clarinet raises "the widow's wail," a cry of lamentation in the slow dirges, shifting into peals of joy in the "cutting loose" parade for the soul's release. A composer and Xavier University professor, White transports us back to the dawn of jazz, and his plantation-born ancestor who helped shape "funerals with music." We follow White, ushered into the funeral marches by older musicians, unto a tearing change in 2005: losing his house, sheet music, 4000 books and 5000 records in the flood, a haunting sequence filmed after Hurricane Katrina. White is an Everyman in the city’s aching death and rebirth. I
In treating the African dynamics of this parading culture, we organized and filmed a landmark historical reenactment of the Congo Square dances, in two time periods, with American-based musicians from Cote D’Ivoire, and Congo, and a score of local musicians, dancers, and extras. Nothing like this has been done before; the scenes will give viewers a vivid sense of how enslaved Africans created a popular culture. Our goal as filmmakers is to make this cultural memory come alive, to show Congo Square as hallowed ground in the city’s history.
The film juxtaposes beauty and sorrow in the aesthetics of burial traditions over time. We spotlight 19th century burial customs of French, Spanish, Sicilian and Irish benevolent societies, showing archival images of departed players show the elegant bearing of people in church parades, 1950s Masonic lodges and burial societies, men in admiral’s hats, women in white with sabers. The film follows the ebbing of benevolent societies caused by the rise of burial insurance, and the emerge Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs in their place, neighborhood parade groups and second liners advancing the danced-memory. Other highlights of the film are the dramatic funerals of Mardi Gras Indian Big Chief Donald Harrison Sr., music icon Danny Barker, and famed civil rights lawyer Lolis Eli.
Deb Cotton had just arrived in New Orleans when Katrina hit. An African-American raised in Oklahoma and California, she was an observant Jew with a wide lens on life. Deb chronicled the post-Katrina recovery with grit and wit in Gambit Weekly blogs. Her video posts captured the beauty of a life force in parades that evolved from funerals of yesteryear.
Deb was shot through the stomach at the 2013 Big Seven club Mother's Day parade; seventeen other people were hit in the crossfire. Miraculously, no one died that day. After months in hospital, and 36 surgeries, she walked into federal court and manifested a Shakespearean grace, forgiving her shooters, asking the judge for lenient prison terms. Praising her, the judge gave the brothers life terms. Deb visited her shooter in prison, and began crusading for a policy to help youth on the jagged edge. “What’s better – to hate him? Our society turns its back on these boys. What’s wrong with us that we can’t help them?” We were planning the sequences on Deb when she was hospitalized in April, with residual issues, and quite suddenly died.
Filming the funeral of a member of this production was heartbreaking for everyone involved, and altered the storyline of the documentary in a way we never expected. We filmed women in brilliant shades of red and white at Deb's cathartic memorial service. The second line wound through the streets of her beloved Tremé neighborhood, the glints of sunlight off the singing horns, the horse-drawn funeral carriage, and dancers cutting loose her soul in the blue summer sky.
As the burial parade rolls on, we see jazz funerals transcending the sorrow of loss, ennobling the memory of the soul cut loose of earthly ties.
We are now in post-production, polishing the rough cut of the film with feedback from focus groups. We are currently raising money to pay for rights and permissions, and our goal is to begin submissions to film festivals this fall, and to premiere the film in 2020. This epic narrative has never been told. We ask your support as we move forward, bringing this film to the big screen.
The documentary City of a Million Dreams: The Untold Story of Funerals in New Orleans follows burial traditions as a lens on the evolution of New Orleans through floods, hurricanes, the dances of enslaved Africans in Congo Square, wars, epidemics, and séances. Through historical reenactments and larger-than-life modern characters, viewers see the ring of African memory in Congo Square drum circles fuse with the European marching band tradition, and blossom into stunning street pageants of life, death, and rebirth with second line dancers. The film builds on research from Writer/Director/Producer Jason Berry's tenth book, published last November, City of a Million Dreams: A History of New Orleans at Year 300.
0.
The marching musicians -- and the spontaneous choreographies of "second liners" who follow the band -- take us on a gripping journey through time. Two tradition-bearers guide us: jazzman Michael White and Deb "Big Red" Cotton, a blogger and videographer at second lines. Our other main character, Gregg Stafford, is a veteran of many funerals with Dr. White and also a founding member of the Black Men of Labor, a prominent social aid and pleasure club known for their stylized West African costumes and dancing.
White's clarinet raises "the widow's wail," a cry of lamentation in the slow dirges, shifting into peals of joy in the "cutting loose" parade for the soul's release. A composer and Xavier University professor, White transports us back to the dawn of jazz, and his plantation-born ancestor who helped shape "funerals with music." We follow White, ushered into the funeral marches by older musicians, unto a tearing change in 2005: losing his house, sheet music, 4000 books and 5000 records in the flood, a haunting sequence filmed after Hurricane Katrina. White is an Everyman in the city’s aching death and rebirth. I
In treating the African dynamics of this parading culture, we organized and filmed a landmark historical reenactment of the Congo Square dances, in two time periods, with American-based musicians from Cote D’Ivoire, and Congo, and a score of local musicians, dancers, and extras. Nothing like this has been done before; the scenes will give viewers a vivid sense of how enslaved Africans created a popular culture. Our goal as filmmakers is to make this cultural memory come alive, to show Congo Square as hallowed ground in the city’s history.
The film juxtaposes beauty and sorrow in the aesthetics of burial traditions over time. We spotlight 19th century burial customs of French, Spanish, Sicilian and Irish benevolent societies, showing archival images of departed players show the elegant bearing of people in church parades, 1950s Masonic lodges and burial societies, men in admiral’s hats, women in white with sabers. The film follows the ebbing of benevolent societies caused by the rise of burial insurance, and the emerge Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs in their place, neighborhood parade groups and second liners advancing the danced-memory. Other highlights of the film are the dramatic funerals of Mardi Gras Indian Big Chief Donald Harrison Sr., music icon Danny Barker, and famed civil rights lawyer Lolis Eli.
Deb Cotton had just arrived in New Orleans when Katrina hit. An African-American raised in Oklahoma and California, she was an observant Jew with a wide lens on life. Deb chronicled the post-Katrina recovery with grit and wit in Gambit Weekly blogs. Her video posts captured the beauty of a life force in parades that evolved from funerals of yesteryear.
Deb was shot through the stomach at the 2013 Big Seven club Mother's Day parade; seventeen other people were hit in the crossfire. Miraculously, no one died that day. After months in hospital, and 36 surgeries, she walked into federal court and manifested a Shakespearean grace, forgiving her shooters, asking the judge for lenient prison terms. Praising her, the judge gave the brothers life terms. Deb visited her shooter in prison, and began crusading for a policy to help youth on the jagged edge. “What’s better – to hate him? Our society turns its back on these boys. What’s wrong with us that we can’t help them?” We were planning the sequences on Deb when she was hospitalized in April, with residual issues, and quite suddenly died.
Filming the funeral of a member of this production was heartbreaking for everyone involved, and altered the storyline of the documentary in a way we never expected. We filmed women in brilliant shades of red and white at Deb's cathartic memorial service. The second line wound through the streets of her beloved Tremé neighborhood, the glints of sunlight off the singing horns, the horse-drawn funeral carriage, and dancers cutting loose her soul in the blue summer sky.
As the burial parade rolls on, we see jazz funerals transcending the sorrow of loss, ennobling the memory of the soul cut loose of earthly ties.
We are now in post-production, polishing the rough cut of the film with feedback from focus groups. We are currently raising money to pay for rights and permissions, and our goal is to begin submissions to film festivals this fall, and to premiere the film in 2020. This epic narrative has never been told. We ask your support as we move forward, bringing this film to the big screen.