The Boatman. 2017. USA. Directed by Zack Godshall. DCP. 13 min.
Eve's Bayou. 1997. USA. Written and directed by Kasi Lemmons. With Samuel L. Jackson, Lynn Whitfield, Debbi Morgan, Vondie Curtis-Hall. DCP. 115 min.
The Boatman centers Joseph and Selina Gonzales as they near their 71st wedding anniversary, mapping their love and endurance across the eroding Louisiana coastline. “How did you make out in the storm?” is one of the first questions New Orleanians greet each other with, in direct reference to survival in the wake of Katrina. The Gonzales family reflect on the commitment and mythicism that made their survival possible, while Joseph offers a tour of the oversized boat that occupies his time and ambitions for an uncertain future.
By the time Kasi Lemmons’s feature debut Eve’s Bayou hit theaters in 1997, voodoo and other aspects of Black diasporic life and ritual had long been co-opted into a condescending cultural trope, cropping up in everything from horror films and cartoons to the everyday imaginary of the American mainstream (“voodoo doll”). Rescuing these traditions from mass culture and restoring their power to haunt us, Lemmons serves up a mysterious tale of familial deception, ghosts, and magic. This is an enduring example of grown folks’ business as seen through the eyes of a curious child—and a pinnacle of cinematic depictions of grief, family, the Bayou, and Black magic, in every sense of that term.