You know how sometimes you're with some casual friend, acquaintance or coworker, and they relate a story as if you know everything about their life and social group, when you mostly have no idea what they are talking about? That's one of the main weaknesses in this film. It feels like viewing random home movies. I say that having lived in Louisiana for longer than I ever thought I would, with multi-generational ties to New Orleans and it's surroundings. Nonetheless this is a pleasant enjoyable passion project that will be appealing to urban explorers and fans of childhood chimeras.
I couldnt begin to tell you who, how and why Jazz-land was ever built, and I lived there during the years when its inception was becoming a reality. It always sounded like a boondoggle to me. Coming out of the era of very high murder rates and economic malaise in the early- mid 90's, it must have taken people with extraordinary vision and tenacity to bring it to fruition, long before Katrina came along. That is certainly one story worth telling, not told here.
For to me the vast terrain of New Orleans East as observed from the roads and highways is a wasteland of broken dreams, consistent neglect and strange decade-specific civil planning experiments, one after the other abandoned in boom bust cycles, that are not visible in such stark relief in the more densely populated areas the city. It is geographically and metaphorically out of sight, out of mind for the rest of the city and suburbs. This documentary could be improved by rooting it in such geographical context, and support its positions with some input from area architectural historians, for a little grounding in objectivity, solving the film's problem without delving into the byzantine and arcane chicanery that got it open, and promptly forgot about it when an opportunity presented itself.
For the few years it was open, it was loved by the people that went, and profitable even as it was left to its own devices. That is the story that is attempted here, in its personal nostalgic tone of mourning for what was lost and might have been. I have seen these same post Katrina. Videos and snapshots, the mold and watermarks and the drone of insects buzzing in someone's abandoned office or home. A story that is told over and over in New Orleans, which never was and never will be The Big Easy for the people that call it home.
Very recently I have heard rumblings that it might revert to a natural park of some sort. There is much enthusiasm in New Orleans these days for streamlined light-handed reclamation of abandoned or not so abandoned properties to ecologically stable public use, along the lines of NYC's The Highline. I hope such enthusiasm is sustained beyond the current real estate bubble.
I couldnt begin to tell you who, how and why Jazz-land was ever built, and I lived there during the years when its inception was becoming a reality. It always sounded like a boondoggle to me. Coming out of the era of very high murder rates and economic malaise in the early- mid 90's, it must have taken people with extraordinary vision and tenacity to bring it to fruition, long before Katrina came along. That is certainly one story worth telling, not told here.
For to me the vast terrain of New Orleans East as observed from the roads and highways is a wasteland of broken dreams, consistent neglect and strange decade-specific civil planning experiments, one after the other abandoned in boom bust cycles, that are not visible in such stark relief in the more densely populated areas the city. It is geographically and metaphorically out of sight, out of mind for the rest of the city and suburbs. This documentary could be improved by rooting it in such geographical context, and support its positions with some input from area architectural historians, for a little grounding in objectivity, solving the film's problem without delving into the byzantine and arcane chicanery that got it open, and promptly forgot about it when an opportunity presented itself.
For the few years it was open, it was loved by the people that went, and profitable even as it was left to its own devices. That is the story that is attempted here, in its personal nostalgic tone of mourning for what was lost and might have been. I have seen these same post Katrina. Videos and snapshots, the mold and watermarks and the drone of insects buzzing in someone's abandoned office or home. A story that is told over and over in New Orleans, which never was and never will be The Big Easy for the people that call it home.
Very recently I have heard rumblings that it might revert to a natural park of some sort. There is much enthusiasm in New Orleans these days for streamlined light-handed reclamation of abandoned or not so abandoned properties to ecologically stable public use, along the lines of NYC's The Highline. I hope such enthusiasm is sustained beyond the current real estate bubble.