Keep on steppin'

Marjoleine Boonstra
2007. United States of America, Germany. vo English. s Spanish. 70’

In 1925 William Faulkner lived in New Orleans for a few months writing short sketches in which he called the city to life. Inspired by Faulkner's impressions, Dutch Filmmaker Marjoleine Boonstra drifts through the devastated streets of New Orleans, at any hour of the day, looking for the fears and dreams of people whose lives have gone adrift as a result of hurricane Katrina.

She meets violent drugs dealers, an old carpenter, three sisters, a lost relief worker, an inconsolable actress, lanky young boys, two friends in wheelchairs, a wise composer. People who, in the aftermath of Katrina, are trying to get their lives back on track, while the city sweeps up the debris of its soul.Faulkner described New Orleans as “a courtesan, not old and yet no longer young, who shuns the sunlight, that the illusion of her former beauty be preserved”.But while the nightly visitors to Bourbon Street may behave as if nothing has happened, she herself has no illusions left.The 83-year-old carpenter Herbert Gettridge is rebuilding his own house, which he constructed with his own hands, and which is now largely wrecked for the third time. He is one of the few inhabitants who returned to the Lower Ninth Ward, the worst hit area of New Orleans. He has seen much of the world, but his house is his life. And however hard the blows of fortune hit him: “I just keep on stepping, that's the way we say it.”