The new film King Crawfish will premier on June 24 at 7 p.mM at the Bayou Bijou Theatre inside the UL Lafayette Student Union.
King Crawfish is the recent creation by Conni Castille and Allison Bohl, the team that made I Always Do My Collars First (2007), and Raised on Rice and Gravy (2009), UL Lafayette Cinematic Arts Workshop productions.
Preceding the film’s screening, the Workshop will host a presentation by National Geographic Explorer, Jon Bowermaster, who will highlight his soon-to-be-released documentary, SoLa: Louisiana Water Stories (http://jonbowermaster.com/videoplayer/videoplayer.php?videoid=1033).
“ The rise of the humble mudbug from poor-man food to haute cuisine was always a curious thing to me,” explains folklorist, Conni Castille, the film’s writer and director.
In King Crawfish the Cajun spirit gets poured out on a communal table, even as the wild harvest is diminishing. At the festival, everything Cajuns value takes to the stage – their language, their music, their food, their dance, and their crawfish. Thousands of pounds of crawfish get served up at the festival, much of it coming from their natural habitat, the Atchafalaya Basin. But, as the film traces the crustacean from festival to Basin, it finds fishermen fighting to retain their way of life in one small fishing community.
“ I think one of the layers in the film is about carrying on tradition,” says Castille. “What we find is the continuation of the festival tradition looking very promising. But, the traditional fishing practices in the Basin, not so much.”
“ It was a challenging story to film,” says Allison Bohl, the film’s director of photography and editor. “What I try to do when I shoot, is convey emotion and information, in an artful way. In King Crawfish, the parallel stories, although connected by the crawfish, are different emotionally.”
Funded in part by a Folklife grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, King Crawfish is the third documentary from directing team Castille and Bohl. Both of their previous films showed in film festivals around the country, and at Cannes Short Film Corner. From the New Orleans Film Festival, I Always Do My Collars First earned the 2007 Louisiana Filmmaker Award, and Raised on Rice Gravy the 2009 Best Short Documentary.
“ The Cinematic Arts Workshop was conceived to support projects precisely like these,” says Charles E. Richard, the Workshop’s director. “The work by Castille and Bohl exemplifies the core principles of this institution, which are about artful films focusing on local themes.”
“ We’re also extremely excited to host Jon Bowermaster’s newest work,” Richard continues. “Renown for his films about the waters of the world, it seems most fitting to pair his latest work on South Louisiana waters with King Crawfish.”
“ I know it’s not news that water is a significant issue here in Southern Louisiana,” says Jon Bowermaster. “Most of the region lays below sea level, and water – rivers, creeks, bayous, swamps, the Mississippi River, the Gulf of Mexico – is never out of sight. It made sense to me that my next film should be set in south Louisiana.”
Admission is free. For more information, call (337) 277-5292, or e-mail connicastille@gmail.com.
To view a trailer of the film go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53POi5cjNCs