May 6-10: TROUBLE THE WATER at Cinematheque

haven't time to dig into it right now, but wanted you to know about TROUBLE THE WATER before it's gone. seems to me there's a god angle on this one...

TROUBLE THE WATER
Pacific Cinematheque
Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - 7:30pm
Thursday, May 7, 2009 - 9:15pm
Friday, May 8, 2009 - 7:30pm
Saturday, May 9, 2009 - 7:30pm
Saturday, May 9, 2009 - 9:20pm
Sunday, May 10, 2009 - 9:15pm

Named Best Documentary at Sundance, nominated for the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, and picked as one of the ten best films of 2008 by critics at The New Yorker, Entertainment Weekly and Politico.com, the extraordinary Trouble the Water offers a unique first-person, from-the-floodwaters account of heroism and hopelessness during the Katrina disaster.

"What divine inspiration moved Kimberly Rivers Roberts, an aspiring rap artist [as Black Kold Madina] and toweringly self-possessed woman from New Orleans’ Ninth Ward, to grab her Hi8 camcorder and document the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina as it smashed up her neighborhood? And what grace brought Roberts to the attention of Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, filmmakers who, like so many others, went to Louisiana after the levees broke? Whatever the cosmic luck, the result, Trouble the Water, is essential, unique viewing: a stunning experience of the hurricane and its aftermath, rooted in immediate personal response and emotions that encapsulate the full national catastrophe" (Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly).

Time’s Richard Corliss included Roberts on his list of top ten movie performances of 2008, calling her "a real-life heroine...the star, and in a way the director, of this soul-roiling nonfiction film...Just look at the good she did, the person she is, in this movie. Amazing."

"The year’s most riveting documentary film...It is also a stirring rebuttal of the ‘objectivity’ mandate in news reporting" (Rob Nelson, Minneapolis Star Tribune). Colour, 35mm. 93 mins.

"Superb...One of the best American documentaries in recent memory."
New York Times

"Extraordinary...Has a desperate urgency that surpasses any other news and doc footage I have seen."
Chicago Sun Times

"Starkly surreal...A first-person disaster movie...An eyewitness epic of history in miniature."
Village Voice