Jonathan Demme is seemingly obsessed with the story of post-Katrina survivors and those with the will to persevere after the 2005 disaster.
We spoke to Demme in September at the Toronto International Film Festival
and he told us he spent the last four years on-and-off shooting portrait documentaries of various community members in New Orleans who inspired others to regroup and rebuild.
“[We documented] the pioneers that were moving back into their devastated neighborhoods and rising to the challenge and in the face of complete indifference and even obstructionism. They were going to get their homes back and rebuild no matter what.”
Now, according to the New York Times, Demme is evidently going to do an animated adaptation of Dave Eggers’ “Zeitoun,” his 2009 novel about one man’s experience in the wake of Hurricane Katrina trying to protect his home and business while helping others from his canoe.
Apparently it was the cover of the book that inspired Demme to render the novel in an animated for. I was staring at the book,” Demme told the Times, “and there’s this wonderful line drawing on the cover, the character of Zeitoun in his canoe, paddling through a submerged neighborhood. And I suddenly imagined, What if we could do an animated film and visualize the experiences of the Zeitoun family and all of New Orleans?”
Apparently Demme’s documentaries no have a title as well, “Right to Return: New Home Movies from the Lower 9th Ward,” but still have no deal or distributor. Demme says he’s now, “deep, deep, deep into researching,” how to pull off the animated film, but said, the project will stick closely to Eggers’ book, “while honoring the absolute truth of the Zeitouns’ experience and the truth of what happened in New Orleans. We all feel like we have a chance to do right.”
Sounds like a pretty interesting and different take on this story. We’re hopeful that someone is around to finance this thing as well as release his ‘Right To Return’ portrait doc. Demme also told that while indefinitely delayed, we may not have heard the last word on his completed Bob Marley documentary that is evidently sitting in the hands of producers trying to figure out what to make of it.
