"...a powerful reflection of Treme as a place of creative ferment and political resistance for some 300 years."- Salon.com

About Faubourg Tremé

Past and present collide in this powerful documentary about Faubourg Tremé, the fabled New Orleans’ neighborhood that gave birth to jazz, launched America’s first black daily newspaper, and nurtured generations of African American activists.  

Faubourg Tremé: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans is the riveting story of one community’s epic struggle for racial equality - from slave revolts and underground free black antebellum resistance, through the challenges of post-Katrina rebuilding today - all set to a fabulous soundtrack of New Orleans music through the ages. This award-winning film gives the depth of history to current racial strife and challenges viewers to think historically and critically about the links between race, class, conflict, and cultural expression in our modern communities.  This is the true story of the neighborhood that inspired David Simon’s fictional HBO television series “Tremé”.  

Long ago during slavery, Faubourg Tremé was home to the largest community of free black people in the Deep South and a hotbed of political and artistic ferment. Here black and white, free and enslaved, rich and poor co-habitated, collaborated, and clashed to create America’s first civil rights movement and much of what defines New Orleans culture up to the present day. Executive produced by Wynton Marsalis and Stanley Nelson, "Faubourg Tremé" is a tale of hope, resistance, and heartbreak.  It sheds important new light on both African American history and current issues of racial inequality.

 “Faubourg Tremé” was largely shot before the Hurricane Katrina tragedy and edited afterward, giving the film both a celebratory and elegiac tone. It is a film of such effortless intimacy, subtle glances and authentic details that only two native New Orleanians could have made it. The Tremé district was damaged when the levees broke as a result of Hurricane Katrina. Many Tremé residents are still unable to return home, and the neighborhood is fighting some of the same civil rights battles first launched here 150 years ago. A deeply moved but defiant Brenda Marie Osbey concludes Faubourg Tremé, "Everywhere we go, we take the spirit of this city's heroes with us and the will to live and fight again.” 

Faubourg Tremé premiered at Tribeca International Film Festival, was featured three years in a row as a national PBS Black History Month Presentation, and won Best Documentary awards from the San Francisco International Film Festival, Popular American Culture Association, and The Society for Visual Anthropology. 

For more information, please contact info@serendipityfilms.org.

"Flat out brilliant...This is a great piece of storytelling, filmmaking and testifying. It is also arguably the most poignant film ever made about New Orleans" - NEW ORLEANS TRIBUNE

68 and 56 min versions available, Released 2008, Closed Captioned
Executive Producers: Wynton Marsalis & Stanley Nelson
Director: Dawn Logsdon
Co-Director/Writer: Lolis Eric Elie
Producers: Lucie Faulknor, Dawn Logsdon & Lolis Eric Elie
Composer: Derrick Hodge