Directorsstatement

The Church on Dauphine Street

Why we made this film

Sometimes one small window provides the most memorable view of an overwhelming event. The Church on Dauphine Street is such a window, and we know it is one of many. But there’s something about this church—home to New Orleans’ deaf Catholics, poised on the edge of the 9th Ward, run by a priest from Belfast and an ex-Marine who signs the masses for the deaf in Spanish and English—and there’s something about this story—of volunteers from Seattle, of all places, coming together with volunteer union craftsmen from Southern Louisiana—that somehow captures the mix of sorrow and hope and camaraderie that is post-Katrina New Orleans.

The Church on Dauphine Street is a documentary project that came to us and to which we said yes, immediately. It started with a phone call. Some volunteers from our home town, Seattle, were heading down to New Orleans to help rebuild a church in the upper 9th Ward: a church that happens to be one third deaf and one third Spanish speaking; a church where nearly every member lost nearly everything in Katrina.

We knew there were plenty of filmmakers already working hard to tell the story of Katrina and its aftermath. But we felt strongly pulled by the idea that we were being given such a unique vantage point from which to view Katrina. We also felt pulled by the idea that this would be a story not just of destruction but of rebuilding.

We have not been disappointed. We made six trips to New Orleans in 2006 and with each trip the story grew deeper and richer. When we tell people about it, they want to hear more, and they cling to its inherent hopefulness like they’re holding on to a—well, to a raft in a flood.

Our objective in making The Church on Dauphine Street is to tell our story using what we call “cinematic journalism”, a type of documentary filmmaking that combines factual objectivity and personal commentary within a poetic, impressionistic structure. We want to illuminate and move people: those who’ve been to New Orleans and those who haven’t; those who understand what Katrina did to the people in its path and those who don’t. We want to tell our story in a way that transcends any one group—Catholics, deaf people, union members, volunteers, survivors—because that crossing of group lines and coming together through shared tragedy and shared hope is what this particular story is all about. And so far, it’s what surviving Katrina may be all about: if the government lets you down, who do you have but each other?

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