Event Description:
Moving on From Disaster in the “Land of Opportunity”
Land of Opportunity (2011) is an award-winning documentary that dives deep into the tumultuous reconstruction of one of America’s most beloved cities through the eyes of those on the front lines. Amistad Research Center will host filmmakers Luisa Dantas and Rebecca Snedeker to screen clips and to discuss the film, the collection at ARC, and the impact of an unprecedented urban reconstruction process twenty years on.
Luisa Dantas is a Brasilian-American multimedia storyteller whose work centers on race, place, and social justice. She has produced, written and directed narratives that span genres and modalities, including animated and live-action fiction and traditional and interactive documentary, that feature complex and nuanced protagonists from traditionally underrepresented communities. Her most recent film, Rip Tide, premiered at the Mill Valley Film Festival and has screened festivals around the world. She also wrote and co-directed MINE, an animated web series about an unraveling utopian community set in the near future, premiered at the Tribeca film festival and won best web series at American Black Film Festival. Luisa also served as the director and Executive Producer Rise-Home Stories, an innovative project funded by the Ford Foundation, which brought together artists and advocates from all over the country to collaboratively harness the power of narrative in the fight for housing, land, and racial justice. Their award-winning body of work includes an animated web series, children’s book, non-fiction podcast, interactive site, and video game that have engaged multigenerational audiences around the world. Luisa also wrote and directed the multi-platform documentary Land of Opportunity, which chronicles the reconstruction of New Orleans through the eyes of those on the frontlines.
Rebecca Snedeker is an artist and public scholar from Bvlbancha/New Orleans and collaborator in the Gulf South Open School and Anthropocene Commons. She is dedicated to creating interdisciplinary, place-based, and immersive learning experiences that support humans in understanding and caring for one another and our surroundings. Snedeker has produced documentary films (1996-2010), coauthored with Rebecca Solnit Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas (2011-14), and served as the director of the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University (2015-24), where she cultivated research, teaching, and programming that focused on the Gulf South bioregion and its relationship to the world, particularly in the areas of Africana, Indigenous, and Environmental Studies. She serves on the Oral History Project Advisory Council for BOMB Magazine, and she is a recipient of an Emmy Award and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
