What you gonna do when the world’s on fire?
Spurred by the police killings of Black people in 2016, Roberto Minervini decides to make a film about Black America. By slowly absorbing their life in New Orleans, and by formally approaching the Black Panthers he builds a picture. As a film-maker, he calls himself a 'politically charged citizen'.
Roberto Minervini's previous film, "Louisiana - The other side" (2015) was shown in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival that year and was nominated for a prize. As a very raw documentary it has been praised for the respect it showed to its characters, in a world that is very far from the mainstream. In the first part it follows the intimate life of a couple, both heroin users, while one of them is on parole from jail to care for his old mother, and then it shifts to a study of anti-government militias in the same state - people who are not short of money and have 'ordinary' jobs.
In his new film, "What you gonna do when the world's on fire?'; spurred by the spate of police killings of unarmed black men in the US in 2016, he spends months getting to know a black community in New Orleans, a world far from the tourist area of the French Quarter, but where the pressure of gentrification is now being felt. After reaching a critical point of conviction he commits to making a film featuring one of the people he has spent many hours talking with. Judy runs a bar where she also sings once a week, and she is also a Queen of the Mardi Gras Indians: a powerful personality deeply committed to her marginalised community.
The Mardi Gras parade is Afro-American but it was the Indians who often gave shelter to escaping slaves, for which they are respected. The film title is a question, but to whom? There are many answers, watch the film and recall James Baldwin's book, The fire next time.
Minervini is Italian by birth but has lived in the US long enough to care about what will happen there to his children and his community. He lives in Houston, Texas, very different from Louisiana.
I spoke to him after watching his new film at the Visions du Reel Festival in Nyon, Switzerland.
The interview was first published on ThePrisma Multicultural Newspaper site and can be followed there with links and stills from the film: https://theprisma.co.uk/2021/08/16/what-you-gonna-do-when-the-worlds-on-fire-2/