My video footage of New Orleans features in new Spike Lee-produced Netflix Katrina series

Written By Barnaby Attwell

A new Netflix three-part documentary series, Katrina: Come Hell and High Water includes video footage I shot in New Orleans in 1996. The trailer, above, has one of my shots in it towards the end. The series looks at the city before, during and after Hurricane Katrina, which struck in late August 2005, making this month the 20th anniversary of the disaster. The hurricane was tragic enough but it was the city’s levees breaking and the subsequent flooding and human error that caused more death and destruction than the natural disaster.

The documentary is executive-produced by Spike Lee, who directed the excellent 2006 When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts which looked at New Orleans in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. I would never have guessed my name would ever be on the same credits as Spike Lee, whose work I have admired since She’s Gotta Have It and Do The Right Thing.

I spent three amazing months in New Orleans in 1996 and made a video there, with the help of several generous friends, called Desire, Hope & Bourbon: on the Streets of New Orleans (below). The video has been on YouTube for years, and a production company contacted me last year asking if they could use some of the street scenes (though none of the interviews, unfortunately) for the documentary. I of course said yes, and almost a year later, the series is being released.

Here’s the press release about the documentary, released August 27. 

Barnaby Attwell
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