Award-winning producer Alisa Payne was residing in Brooklyn when Hurricane Katrina was set to hit New Orleans in 2005, however her sister was a third-year regulation scholar at Tulane College.
Like many residents in New Orleans and the encompassing areas, Payne’s sister was planning to experience out the storm. Then, she was warned by a classmate’s mom, an government at Entergy, to evacuate instantly.
“The issue was, my sister is ready to get this intel, however the individuals in New Orleans, in Orleans Parish, didn’t get the evacuation discover till 36 hours earlier than,” Payne stated. “It’s inconceivable when there’s a technique in and a technique out of the town to get all of these individuals out. It takes days and days, if not over every week, to evacuate a whole metropolis.”
In “Katrina: Come Hell and Excessive Water,” Spike Lee’s docuseries displays on the pure catastrophe that was a artifical tragedy, 20 years later. Payne used her function as a producer to emphasise the structural the explanation why New Orleans’ Black, aged, and poor residents have been most detrimentally affected by the storm and its aftermath.
Payne is the cofounder of the manufacturing firm Message Photos with Geeta Gandbhir and Sam Pollard, each of whom labored with Lee on his two earlier initiatives about Hurricane Katrina, “When the Levees Broke” (2006) and “If God Is Keen and da Creek Don’t Rise” (2010). To commemorate the 20 years which have handed since Katrina, Netflix reached out to Pollard, who introduced Message Photos onto the mission.
“Come Hell and Excessive Water” in some ways is a continuation of the tales of the Katrina survivors Spike Lee interviewed in his earlier documentaries. We hear once more from public servants like former mayor Marc Morial, and beloved neighborhood members like Phyllis Montana-Leblanc, whom Lee known as a “star” after she appeared in “When the Levees Broke.” However Payne stated that this mission is just not presupposed to make a “trilogy” of Lee’s two different works. She known as “Come Hell and Excessive Water” a “contemporized” model of the Katrina documentary for the subsequent era.
“Folks really feel that they thought they knew the story. Twenty years later, we’re saying issues like ‘systemic racism’ typically. Utilizing that language makes it very clear for individuals who, on the time, it wasn’t clear for.”
Payne’s profession as a producer spans over 25 years, and a few of her current credit embody the e book diversifications of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me” for HBO and Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s “Stamped from the Starting” for Netflix. We additionally talk about considered one of her upcoming movies, “The Good Neighbor,” which investigates the homicide of a Florida girl named Ajike Owens by means of police bodycam footage, within the dialog beneath, which has been edited for readability.
TheGrio: What was it like engaged on a mission the place most of the individuals had already been interviewed by Spike Lee beforehand and had shared their tales?
Alisa Payne: [Spike] and I had had a dialog about it, and he stated, “I need to revisit them, as a result of lots of issues haven’t modified for the higher for these individuals.”
It was undoubtedly essential to say, 20 years later, these persons are nonetheless affected. Twenty years later, infrastructure has not modified. Twenty years later, if one thing like this occurred once more, they may very well be in the identical predicament. It was actually essential to speak to them. Phyllis Montana-Leblanc had been within the two earlier items, however stated this course of and this workforce and seeing herself on this mission has made her heal, lastly, after 20 years.
TG: Have you learnt what sort of adjustments between then and now would have made her say that?
AP: I believe it was calling a spade a spade behind the scenes. We had lots of discuss whether or not to overtly discuss concerning the institutional racism. My thought had all the time been that the racism was so overt, we shouldn’t be covert about it. And I believe she was in a position to say the issues very clearly. You realize, “You might be the one-eyed, deaf, blind pirate and nonetheless see that this sh*t was racial.”
And I believe it was having the ability to, one, inform her story, however two, be capable to say that and to be affirmed by it, that basically made a distinction. You’ll be able to assume that you simply’re loopy as a result of the narrative was spun in any other case.
TG: Going again and watching the earlier documentaries, how did they inform the method of constructing this one?
AP: Spike and the workforce had relationships, however we have been very clear that this was not presupposed to be “Levees” half three. That is undoubtedly a contemporized model with the brand new language that we’ve post-2020 and George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. So, this was presupposed to be its personal piece. And people different items have been on HBO. This one is on Netflix, and so we introduced on three totally different administrators for that purpose.
TG: When engaged on initiatives like “Stamped from the Starting,” which is all concerning the creation of anti-Blackness and the definition of Blackness, how do you go about deciding the best way to execute such a big theme into one thing that an viewers can watch in an hour and a half?
AP: I believe it’s actually about attempting to determine what the thesis is. The thesis of “Stamped from the Starting” is: Each time there’s Black progress, there’s a enormous backlash. Dr. Kendi’s e book is damaged down into characters, however these characters are coping with totally different time durations. And so we talked about what time durations we wished to debate.
Within the considered “Katrina,” it was concerning the thesis. Systemic racism and neglect led to Katrina and made it go from a pure catastrophe to the worst artifical catastrophe, and we would have liked to set the report straight. So in the event you begin there, you begin to determine with the questions we ask and with the edits that we’re doing: Tonally, are we there? Visually, are we there?
TG: Do you discover that there are variations or challenges between telling native tales, versus telling tales that join totally different locations?
AP: If you’re speaking about one thing so large as “Stamped from the Starting,” we’re speaking about 1452 to 2023. There was a lot that hit the slicing room ground. The problem is absolutely to determine what to incorporate.
I believe while you’re telling one thing that’s hyperlocal, it’s each a problem and a possibility. For our mission, “The Good Neighbor,” you may have a look at this as a neighborhood dispute, nevertheless it’s about a lot extra. It’s about how unjustified concern can result in this. It’s additionally about “stand your floor” and the way coverage can result in this individual feeling emboldened to take this act. Although it’s about one individual killing one other individual, everybody has neighbors, everybody lives in a neighborhood, and needs to be an upstander, not a bystander. Everybody ought to attempt to get alongside and never be violent in neighborhood.
All of us perceive insurance policies that may be dangerous, and if we ignore insurance policies that may be dangerous, extra insurance policies come, and we’ve an authoritarian authorities that spreads from America to the world. In these items the place it’s a couple of small space, it’s all the time about ensuring that it’s particular, however there’s a universality, the place everyone can see themselves in it.
TG: “The Good Neighbor” depends on physique cam footage over time. It’s much less about bringing all these totally different items of media collectively. The storytelling is extra linear.
AP: The attorneys did a FOIA request, a Freedom of Info Act, in order that we may get the footage. But it surely’s police physique digicam footage, and nothing about that was linear. It was actually troublesome to attempt to even work out which policemen have been speaking. The audio challenges on that piece was hell as a result of additionally they have walkie-talkies competing with the sound.
After which additionally, police physique cam footage is used typically to surveillance Black and Brown communities. And so how will we use this, then, to flip that on its head? What we created was a neighborhood piece. It’s about this lovely, multi-racial, multi-ethnic neighborhood with one harmful outlier. And so I believe in lots of methods, it was more durable to create “The Good Neighbor.”
TG: You’ve stated that “Roots” knowledgeable your path as a producer.
AP: I used to be born within the 70s, however I grew up within the 80s, and within the summers, I’d watch “Roots” replay. They’d play it within the day when youngsters are dwelling in New York Metropolis, and my brother and I’d watch it. And it simply actually moved me to know the historical past. To see this cruelty, but in addition to see the resistance, the enjoyment. They identified that Kunta Kinte had resisted from day one, and it informs my later work.
Once we discuss “Stamped from the Starting,” I say the identical issues that I realized from “Roots.” Black individuals resisted from day one. From the shores, they resisted. Enslaved individuals have been creating households and lineage and attempting to cross down the bits of their tradition that they have been pressured to overlook.
“Levees” additionally performed a job, as a result of it was so on the bottom in the mean time, and it was a counter-narrative. And it’s fascinating, as a result of once I did “Between the World and Me,” our director, Kamilah Forbes, was very clear that she wished to do it inside lockdown and in the course of the pandemic. I lived up the road from Brooklyn Hospital, and there have been individuals being put in freezers. And I had to determine the best way to get actors, our crew, our workers, safely filming in six totally different cities. Earlier than everyone was utilizing Zoom, earlier than we had vaccinations, we have been out within the subject in hazmat fits. Sixteen weeks and two days from the day I used to be employed to be the producer to when it was on air. I all the time say we have been in pre-production, manufacturing, and put up .
Generally you set your physique on the road as a result of different individuals have finished it earlier than, to just remember to can get one thing. We wished it to have an effect on the election. I by no means hope to make a mission that fast once more, nevertheless it was completely essential.
