POST COASTAL

Post Coastal is a community documentary series that explores life on the
Louisiana coast after the crisis of land loss has been named.  How do individuals and communities exist in this period post crisis? And what sort of systems, infrastructure and governing bodies do they encounter in the process of trying to move forward? We follow individuals and communities who are persisting – some resisting change, some fighting to be counted, others trying to adapt.  We explore the history of centuries-old infrastructure, competing interests and systems ripe for change, and their impacts on coastal citizens.

Post Coastal is created by Louisiana residents in collaboration with coastal
communities and advocates. In addition to our documentary work, we are
teaching media workshops with youth in coastal communities. We are so grateful for the stories that communities have shared with us and we seek to share expertise in media production back to those communities so that they may have access to a broader set of tools as they continue to tell their own.

Antenna::Signals

::Docs

Antenna in collaboration with NOVAC is proud to present Signals::Docs featuring short films of remarkable people in New Orleans. This is a film series companion to the Antenna::Signals quarterly event series, a variety show-style ‘live action art magazine’ that travels to venues around New Orleans to present a spread of 6-8 artists, writers, filmmakers, musicians, historians, scientists, and more for short presentations and performances on a theme. Each film in the series represents a collaboration between a different emerging filmmaker and Antenna::Signals presenter. Produced by Antena and NOVAC, with the support of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ella West Freeman Foundation, and the RosaMary Foundation.

REEL JUSTICE

Reel Justice is NOVAC’s new community documentary program that creates content around criminal justice issues that engages with and directly impacts the criminal justice system and criminal justice reform efforts in Louisiana. The goal is to provide easy-to-understand informational documentaries around sentencing laws and practices, especially as they change and are updated, and to highlight human stories that illustrate the ways in which our national criminal justice system, and Louisiana’s incredibly punitive system, impacts local communities. In addition to using these videos as tools to affect sentencing and increase public access to often difficult to understand information, we will be using these documentary productions as a developmental pathway for creative and economic opportunity for system-involved and system-adjacent youth and adults. This model of short documentary content developed in partnership with the communities represented has become a hallmark of NOVAC’s methodology, based on our work on projects including POST COASTAL (funded by the NEA) and BetteR. Recently supported with funding from the NEA, NOVAC is working with communities and criminal justice professionals, identifying and creating documentary storytelling projects that address some of the major pressure points in the pipeline of the system.

BetteR

BetteR, a documentary web series produced by NOVAC with support from the Foundation for Louisiana and the Office of Community Development of Baton Rouge, focuses on the aftermath of the violence and flooding of the summer of 2016. The documentary shorts highlight the community organizing efforts and political and artistic responses to the violence that culminated in the shooting of Alton Sterling and the ambush of local law enforcement officers. BetteR also follows the work of those struggling to clean up and rebuild an already devastated community in the wake of summer flooding on an unheard of scale.  Our first foray into community documentary work since 2006’s THE DRIVE, BetteR combined documentaries produced in house at NOVAC as well as a call for commissions to the Baton Rouge community of storytellers. Through funding from the Foundation for Louisiana, NOVAC was able to give out five microgrants to Baton Rouge independent filmmakers to create their responses to the events of 2016, combining their work with our in-house productions. The films from this series premiered in Baton Rouge at the Manship Theatre, and have screened at the New Orleans Film Festival, the Patois Film Festival and more.

MUSIC VIDEO PRODUCTION PROJECT

The music video production project is designed to educate locals in video production while producing high-quality video content for local musicians across Louisiana.  Each year, NOVAC works with 2-3 local bands from around the state to create music videos that are free to the band, thereby supporting their work in building music business.  Meanwhile, we hire local filmmakers and provide production opportunities to local aspiring filmmakers so the production process is a learning environment. Featured bands and musicians include Grammy-nominated Kenny Neal, Tank and the Bangas, Trumpet Black and the Heart Attack, Blato Zlato, the Revelers, King James and the Special Men and Cha Wa. Thanks to support from the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation, WWOZ, the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge and the Baton Rouge Blues Foundation, NOVAC has created this set of videos over the years. Check ’em out!