It’s always great to see a local film organization move along with “the times.” Since the COVID pandemic, our New Orleans Film Society has incorporated more and more accessibility tools for its flagship festival, from virtual (online) programming to making sure that more moviegoers have a chance at attending. This year’s event will continue these trends, providing local and regional filmmakers with a wider audience.
Before the screenings get underway, a Gala party will be held at The Civic Theatre on October 24th at 7 PM, where a group of honorees will receive awards for their contributions to cinema. While Amy Schumer – comedian, actress, and relative of Senator Chuck Schumer, will no longer be attending, the evening’s main attraction, for me, will be the presentation of the Lumiere award to Darcy McKinnon.
I’ve known Darcy for years, having met during her direction of the New Orleans Video Access Center, which provides students and up & coming filmmakers with tools and resources to learn and create.
Having interviewed her previously for Big Easy Magazine some years ago, I wanted to conduct a follow-up of sorts, this time focusing on her experience, her achievements, and her vision of our film culture’s future.
And, here we are:
Bill Arceneaux: What does it mean – for you and in general – to receive an award named after the early adopters and pioneers of filmmaking?
Darcy McKinnon: It’s an honor to receive this award, but I can’t take any credit for innovation or pioneering. I have been stepping into and collaborating with folks who have built the independent film industry in New Orleans since I started, and I continue to work by leaning on the amazing and talented people who make up this community today.
BA: The New Orleans Film Society has seen some changes since the COVID pandemic, from virtual access to disability inclusiveness to new leadership roles. Is the organization, in your opinion, meeting these challenging moments as best as possible, and do you have any thoughts on what else the festival can do for local filmmakers and moviegoers?
DM: It’s always a challenge to build a thriving arts organization in the Deep South – we don’t have the capital or infrastructural support of larger urban centers in the Northeast or West. What we do have is people, and the New Orleans Film Society, over the past 15 years of my acquaintance and involvement with them, has prioritized our storytellers and the communities who build stories – making sure to include ALL visions and voices, and providing support and structure to the complex practice of making independent film. Today, that work is harder – the loss of federal funding, the changing commercial film industry landscape, technological and viewership changes, and the reallocation of many philanthropic funds to stand up some of our key media institutions in the country – and independent filmmakers, especially those from underserved communities, are standing in the breach, with fewer supports than ever. Times like these call for community, and the Film Society is going to lead by doing what it has been for the past decade and a half, listening to its community.
BA: Go over your history as part of the New Orleans film community, from the beginning to the present, if you please.
DM: I moved to New Orleans in 2002. I had been working in documentary in the Bay Area but wanted to be back in the South and closer to my family. I didn’t have a plan, and at the time, there wasn’t really a film community in the city. Through leading a youth media program at NOVAC, I became a public school teacher and taught middle school history for seven years, on both sides of the storm. I always kept a connection to NOVAC, which was my first connection when I moved to New Orleans. And in 2012, as a community board member, I stepped in as interim ED. I found quickly that the work at NOVAC was my favorite part of my week, and over the next few months, decided to try to become the ED for real. I was the Executive Director of NOVAC for nine years, and during that time, saw the rise of the most vibrant independent film community in the South, and perhaps more than regionally. Through my work at NOVAC, I got the opportunity to meet practically every independent filmmaker in the city, and began to collaborate with some of them to help get their movies made. I found myself leading an organization I loved, but also invigorated by the possibilities of new film projects. As CJ Hunt’s The Neutral Ground and Nailah Jefferson’s Commuted gained momentum, I decided I wanted to try producing as a job. I left NOVAC in India King-Robins’ capable hands in 2020 and have been producing independent documentaries in and about the American South since then.
BA: What three moments from your work at NOVAC (New Orleans Video Access Center) do you cherish the most?
DM: I loved seeing people make something and gain pride. Some of our youth media productions, which most folks will never see, were so exciting and generative. Taking a high school filmmaker from Lafitte, Louisiana, to her first film festival, to screen her film about her hometown at a major film festival, was a highlight.
I loved getting people jobs – we gave away a million NOVAC t-shirts as part of our workforce training programs, and stepping on the sets of major film and tv shows, to see an AC or a Grip wearing a NOVAC tshirt, and talking with them about how their NOVAC training was their first step to a production job – that never gets old.
And finally, I’m really proud of the production work we kickstarted again – projects like POST COASTAL and BETTER, where we collaborated with (and funded) local filmmakers to connect with communities and use their filmmaking skills towards a community-focused project. It’s just the fullest fulfillment of NOVAC’s mission, I think, creating learning opportunities, high production value short films and supporting our local community. NOVAC is continuing that tradition today through their filmmaking cohort projects.
BA: The name “Hollywood South” and the industry it represents have undergone many changes, both positive and negative, since its current iteration. Where do you see film production in Louisiana going over the next five years?
DM: Not for the first time, the industry is in flux, and people whose livelihoods are tied to this industry are struggling. We are in a great restructuring period, and filmmakers are looking to find new pathways to funding, production, and distribution. And as before, no one is coming to save us. It’s time for us to be clear-eyed and find collaboration and partnership in the communities that we care about, and to imagine pathways to creativity that don’t depend on commercial approval from outside. I hope, for our local crews, that more productions come to Louisiana in the upcoming years. In the absence of that, we have got to make work and opportunities ourselves. I am seeing a lot of independent work on a smaller scale – even actors and writers working on local plays and performances, we are a city with an unending well of creativity – sadly, right now, we are going to have to scale it to meet the moment.
BA: What is the state of independent filmmaking in this region right now?
DM: A lot of folks from our “first gen” indie era have left town – or they are working out of town for now. A new crop of filmmaking talent is emerging. And a lot of independent filmmakers from other parts of the country are coming to New Orleans to find locations, connections, and inspiration. The regional reputation of the New Orleans Film Society over the past years has meant a LOT of independent film talent has come through the city, and many of them can’t seem to quit it here 🙂 As a result, though there has been some changing of the guard, we are still making indie films here in New Orleans. Film will continue – there’s never been more appetite for media content – a question I have is how nimble our creative community can be to connect with the opportunities that new technology presents.
BA: As a filmmaker and producer yourself, describe the kind of obstacles that are faced when making a movie like Natchez.
DM: Natchez explores the often hidden truths that make up the soul of a place. Neither director Suzannah Herbert nor I are from Mississippi – we relied on our shared Southernness to build relationships, but we also had to listen and let people talk in order to understand where they were coming from. And many of them come from places and philosophies that are very different from our own. So being open and willing to listen, because we wanted to hear from people different from ourselves, was important. And then presenting our vision – a cinematic portrait of a small Mississippi town as a lens into the mythologies and conversations that define America – to funders and partners who aren’t from the South, was another challenge.
BA: How did Nathez come about, and what lessons, if any, have you learned from its production and distribution?
DM: Director Suzannah Herbert got invited to a wedding on a plantation, and she was shocked. She wanted to try and explore this by embedding at a plantation during wedding season, and had identified a plantation in Louisiana. She was looking for a local producer, and we met and got along like a house on fire. The plantation project fell through, so we were looking for another place that could get at the conflicts and conversation about the historic sites in the South, and Natchez bubbled up in her research – as a place of such deep history, and such deep commitment to one version of it. Suzannah describes it as the beauty and the horror, in tension every day.
Even as we were entering production, we knew we didn’t want to make a ‘traditional’ talking head documentary. All of our conversations were about how the mythology of the South was going to translate on screen. One of the things I’m proudest of with this film is our extraordinary cinematography (Noah Collier) and our uniquely structured ensemble drama (editor Pablo Proenza). Through the process, Suz and I learned that a thoughtful commitment to cinematic storytelling, we could make a film that would emotionally connect with audiences like a fiction film, and be an entertaining and enjoyable experience even as it tackled hard topics.
BA: Do you have any new projects lined up at this time?
DM: Yes! I’m working on The First Plantation, a film about Barbados, with Jason Fitzroy Jeffers (who I met at the New Orleans Film Festival), Nailah Jefferson’s BE, a new project with CJ Hunt, Nicole Craine’s Kinfolk, Brian Becker’s Swampfest The Movie, and Zac Manuel’s new project, The Instrument. They are all in different stages of production.
__________
The New Orleans Film Festival takes place in person from October 23 to 27 and virtually from October 23 to November 2. Tickets and passes are available now. For more information on the documentary Natchez, visit its official website.
