Jason Berry’s celebrated documentary “City of A Million Dreams: Parading for the Dead in New Orleans,” is coming to Nashville next month. This is one of the stops for this year’s 2024-2025 South Arts Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers. It is a long-running South Arts program that connects US-based documentary filmmakers with communities throughout the South for screenings and conversations around important stories, topics, and the art of filmmaking. The Nashville location for the screening will be the Global Education Center, 4822 Charlotte Avenue. It’s set for November 16 at 4 p.m. There’s also a dance party scheduled in conjunction with it.
“City of a Million Dreams” offers audiences a deep examination of two Crescent City cultural traditions, the New Orleans jazz funeral and the Mardi Gras Indians. Director Jason Berry utilizes both historic photographs and recently filmed reenactments to focus on New Orleans’ colorful and lively street culture history, which developed directly out of the Sunday gatherings of slaves in Congo Square.
Berry has also written a book “City Of A Million Dreams” that goes into even more detail about how the “second line” jazz funeral developed out of both African tribal structures and European high society practices. The funerals were mounted by the Black fraternal and social aid organizations to meet the end of life needs of the community during segregation. The sources for the ritual incorporate everything from the legacy of Haitian slave revolt refugees to beliefs in the Sicilian immigrant community.
“Dancing when someone dies is the most brilliant thing you can do,” writer and videographer Deb “Big Red” Cotton, a West Coast transplant who is the other central figure in the film, offers as an observation and analysis. Plus it has the input of Dr. Michael White, a longtime musician and curator of the city’s musical and cultural legacies. Sadly, Dr. White’s archives were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. He insists that racism’s tenacious presence makes the second line tradition relevant today.
“You are transformed into another world that really sets you free,” he says. That Berry was able to complete the film is also quite a story, as he overcame Katrina’s ravages. “City of A Million Dreams” has been shown at several festivals and earned lots of awards.
(“City of A Million Dreams: Parading For the Dead In New Orleans” screens Nov. 16 at the Global Education Center, 4822 Charlotte Avenue, at 4 p.m. Tickets are $10 (+ $10 for dance party.)
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