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LTCC presents Sundance winner

Lake Tahoe Action

Lake Tahoe Community College’s Performing Arts League will present “Trouble The Water” at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 30, in the Duke Theater.

Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, producers of “Bowling for Columbine” and “Fahrenheit 9/11,” directed and produced the winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.

The film opens the day before Hurricane Katrina makes landfall, blocks from the French Quarter but far from the New Orleans that most tourists knew. Aspiring rap artist Kimberly Rivers Roberts turns her new video camera on herself and her 9th Ward neighbors trapped in the city.



“It’s going to be a day to remember,” Roberts says.

As the hurricane rages and floodwaters fill the screen, Roberts and her husband, Scott, film their retreat to higher ground and the rescues of friends and neighbors. The filmmakers document the couple’s return to New Orleans, the devastation of their neighborhood and the repeated failures of government.



Using under the name Black Kold Madina, Roberts recorded a dozen underground tracks on a demo album, “Tryed and True,” before Katrina hit.

“I grew up in the streets of New Orleans, where the opportunity to go to prison is much greater than being successful, where like a lot places you gotta play the hand you dealt, until it’s your turn to deal,” Roberts said in a news release. “Being pressured by those options, I knew I had to come up with a way to get me and my family into a better situation than the one that was given to us.”

She thought she lost all her music in the hurricane. But at the heart of the film is Roberts’ spontaneous of her own song “Amazing” just moments after she finding the only existing record of her music with a relative in Memphis.

Black Kold Madina is rooted in New Orleans’ bounce hip-hop. Before Katrina, Roberts was trying to break through in the city’s underground rap scene, which spawned the likes of Lil Wayne, Juvenile and Master P, as well as Roberts role model Mia X. In Katrina’s wake, Kold Madina has recorded dozens more tracks on Born Hustler Records, the record label Roberts and Scott formed, including “Bone Gristle” and “Troubled the Waters.” Both songs appear in the film, and Roberts wrote the latter for the movie after she learned of its working title.

Neil Davidge and Robert Del Naja of the pioneering trip-hop group Massive Attack fused hip-hop, soul and hypnotic melodies into the score for “Trouble the Water.” Davidge and Del Naja have collaborated on the scores for “Snatch,” “The Matrix” and “Unleashed.”

The filmmakers, already fans of Massive Attack, had used some of the group’s music temporarily and sent a rough cut to the band’s manager.

“As soon as I saw those 911 calls set to that amazing home movie footage, I said ‘We have to do this, mate,'” Davidge said. “There was just no doubt from the start.”

The score gives way to blues, gospel, jazz and underground hip-hop by a variety of artists, including a piano arrangement of the traditional “Wade in the Water” by Dr. John, a gospel version of that same song by duo Mary Mary, blues by John Lee Hooker, hip-hop by the Roots, “Hurricane Waters” by Citizen Cope, and New Orleans second-line music by the Free Agents Brass Band.

“Trouble the Water” is unrated and 90 minutes long. Tickets are $5 for general admission, and $4 for seniors, children and LTCC students with identification card. Children 10 and younger get in free with an adult. The box office opens at 6:45 p.m.

For more information, call 541-4660, ext. 512.


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