Roberts, along with her husband Scott Roberts, makes the treacherous decision - like many of her poor, resources-deprived neighbors - to ride out the August 2005 storm from her home. But she also makes the equally inspired choice to train her newly purchased $20 camcorder on the disaster. Like the beginning of a horror movie, Roberts films the eerily quiet streets of the city as people await Hurricane Katrina's landfall, most of them with no means to leave the city, and nowhere to go. And she's still filming when the water begins to rise. She records the growing panic and resignation of her neighbors and then the devastation of Katrina as a breached levee causes the water to creep up to the attic where the couple and some neighbors have retreated.
Filmmakers Carl Deal and Tia Lessin blend that moving, extraordinary footage shot by Kimberly Rivers Roberts with news imagery featuring New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco and the filmmakers' own 16-millimeter footage. They create meaning out of that mix of perspectives to give viewers a you-are-there, human immediacy within a cataclysmic event. The result is empowering, giving Roberts a voice beyond the conventional documentary talking head and allows for the direct and immediate involvement of ordinary people in the documentary process, a turned corner for the genre.
Both Kimberly and her husband Scott make for compelling subjects in their own right. Both are former drug dealers with troubled personal histories (Kimberly lost her mother to AIDS when she was just 13) who nevertheless prove deeply sympathetic, moving guides to the personal toll of this natural disaster; they are also living proof of the failure of the American government to protect its most vulnerable citizens.
Trouble the Water came into existence under unusual circumstances. New York filmmakers Deal and Lessin, former producers on Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) and Bowling for Columbine (2002) had initially traveled to Louisiana's Fort Polk with the intention of shooting National Guardsmen formerly fighting in Iraq and now battling the homegrown disaster of Katrina. But the filmmakers were denied access to the troops by high-ranking members of the National Guard. One official told them, as they were attempting to focus on the National Guard troops, "Fahrenheit 9/11 screwed it up for all you guys." In a stroke of good luck, the pair met Roberts in a Central Louisiana Red Cross shelter, and saw the storytelling potential in the Hurricane Katrina footage she showed them.
After that serendipitous meeting, Deal and Lessin filmed the Roberts off and on for two years. They followed them to Kimberly's uncle's trailer in northern Louisiana and then to Memphis, Tennessee as the couple attempt to make a new start. Trailing alongside Kimberly and Scott, the filmmakers record scene after scene of harrowing material, from the life-affirming moment when, after discovering music she believed was lost in the storm, Kimberly performs the rousing song "Amazing" under her rap name Black Kold Madina. The filmmakers follow the couple back to New Orleans where they discover the decaying body of a relative and the war-torn appearance of New Orleans' streets and hear stories of relatives abandoned in city hospitals and prisons. "It's like we're un-American, like we lost our citizenship," says Kimberly.
Trouble the Water was a winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and the IFP Gotham Award as well as an Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary. It appeared on numerous critics Top Ten awards for 2008, including New York magazine's David Edelstein, The New Yorker's David Denby, the Los Angeles Times' Kenneth Turan and Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwartzbaum.
Kimberly went on to have a baby, start a non-profit organization devoted to helping those with substance abuse, a motivational speaker, and an actress on the HBO series "Treme."
In his review of the film, Roger Ebert wrote, "If you could have witnessed Katrina at Ground Zero, your blood would have boiled at the treatment of U.S. citizens. The extraordinary documentary Trouble the Water had an eyewitness in the city's 9th Ward, during the hurricane. Her name was Kimberly Roberts...Her footage is surrounded by professionally filmed material that deepens and explains what happened. But the eyewitness footage has a desperate urgency that surpasses any other news and doc footage I have seen."
Director: Carl Deal, Tia Lessin
Producer: Carl Deal, Tia Lessin
Cinematography: PJ Raval, Kimberly Rivers Roberts
Music: Neil Davidge, Robert del Naja
Cast: Kimberly Rivers Roberts, Scott Roberts
C-90m.
by Felicia Feaster
