Description
*This is a DVD/CD/Book set*
Format: NTSC Region: All
Release Date: Film originally released ca. 1974; this version 2018
Label: Fremeaux & Assoc.
DVD – 47 min.; CD – audio 69 min.; includes a 28-pg book
English subtitles.
Director: Jean-Pierre Bruneau
FROM THE PUBLISHER
This set contains two essential historic documents dealing with the music and culture of the Cajuns and Creoles of Louisiana. The CD and the film presented here resulted from the travels of filmmaker Jean-Pierre Bruneau, who in the Seventies was one of the rare people to take an interest in this music that was sill marginal and unrecognized at that time. The music here comes from a hybrid, fragile French-speaking culture that managed to somehow survive in the isolated world of the marshlands and bayous of southern Louisiana. Above and beyond its obvious natural heritage value, this set provides direct testimony of a period considered to be this music’s Golden Age, and features the greatest musicians of the time, all of them legends today: the Balfa brothers, Clifton Chenier, Bee Fontenot, Alphonse “Bois Sec” Ardoin and Canray Fontenot.
CD INCLUDES PERFORMANCES BY:
Freeman Bee Fonteno , Bee Fontenot, Sherley Bergeron , Shirley Bergeron, Nathan Abshire , Les Frères Balfa , Balfa Dewey, Bee Deshotels , Freeman Fonteno Bee , Canray Fontenot , Dennis Mc Gee , Bee & Ed Deshotels, Fontenot Freeman , Freeman Fontenot, A. Ardoin , Alphonse Bois Sec Ardoin, Alphonse Bois Sec Ardoin & Les Frères Balfa, Fonteno Bee Freeman , Anonyme
REVIEWS
– “My favorite film about Southwest Louisiana” by Cecil Doyle (KRVS/Radio-Acadie)
“’Dedans le Sud de la Louisiane’ is actually even MORE than simply my favorite film about Southwest Louisiana. It captures it at a very special moment in time – a transitional period when we were still a relatively isolated culture on the cusp of a generation that would not only embrace what came before but build upon it. The film literally captures the very essence and wonder of both the music and lifestyle of prairie Cajun and Creole culture like few others.”
By Cecil DOYLE, MUSIC DIRECTOR/PROGRAM PRODUCER AT KRVS/RADIO-ACADIE, LAFAYETTE, LOUISIANA.
– “The best documentary on Louisiana’s French music” by Dr D. Simpson, Louisiana State University
“Dedans le Sud de la Louisiane, shot in 1972, may very well be the best documentary on Louisiana’s French music and culture ever produced, so it is very good news indeed that this classic film by Jean Pierre Bruneau is now available as a DVD, handsomely packaged in a small book that contains discussions of songs and marvelous old photos. (…) The DVD notes are in both French and English, and the film has English subtitles. Bruneau obviously fell in love with the French-speaking people of South Louisiana and their world, and that love is apparent in every frame of this film (…) ».
By Dr. DAVID SIMPSON, PROFESSOR EMERITUS, LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY
