friday, june 18, 2010
RELIABLE SOURCE
Missing the
Bravos The Salahis’ lunchtime Q&A with Carol Joynt gets heated. C2
BOOK WORLD
‘Backseat Saints’ Joshilyn Jackson’s novel about domestic violence is so brutal and ultra-realistic that you can’t help being sickened and mesmerized. C3
Style ABCDE C S THE TV COLUMN
Unappetizing District? Just 1.8 million people tuned into the debut “Top Chef: D.C.” on Wednesday. “Real World: D.C.” also failed to get eyeballs. Does this mean our city isn’t a tasty reality treat? C4
MOVIE REVIEW He isn’t
sitting pretty Josh Brolin stars in the tedious “Jonah Hex” as a disfigured comic book cowboy come to life. C3
3LIVE TODAY @
washingtonpost.com/discussions Carolyn Hax tackles your problems Noon • Lisa de Moraes talks comedy, drama and all things TV 1 p.m. FESTIVAL PREVIEW recessions, and storm after storm. We can’t fight this.”
“You can see it in people’s eyes. We’ve fought — Terry Serigny, whose family helped found Leeville, on the town’s prospects
Silverdocs: A tapestry of war, loss
From strife in the Middle East to the scourge of HIV in D.C., this year’s themes echo
by Ann Hornaday Lots of good documentaries arrive in
Washington every spring on the local fes- tival circuit, but by far the best pickings are saved for June, with the Silverdocs Documentary Festival. Now in its eighth year, Silverdocs, co-sponsored by the American Film Institute and the Discov- ery Channel, has steadily gained audienc- es and recognition among filmmakers as an important venue for nonfiction films. At its best, each year Silverdocs has given viewers not only a glimpse of good docu- mentaries, but also a vivid sense of what it looks and sounds and feels like to be alive at that particular moment in time. This year’s Silverdocs, which opens
PHOTOS BY DAN ZAK/THE WASHINGTON POST
COUP DE GRACE? Third-generation Leevillean Matthew Bryan says, “I see this as the beginning of another depression if the rigs and waters don’t reopen. We’ll lose everything that goes with it: the money, the culture, the traditions that weren’t even mine yet.” Below, Highway 1 bypasses Leeville.
OF LEEVILLE THE LAST
A wide spot in the road sees its chances grow slim as the BP oil spill threatens its existence
by Dan Zak in leeville, la.
T
heir eyes are bloodshot. Their scraggy skin glows reddish- brown. They clutch cans of beer. On the wooden deck of Griffin’s Marina and Ice, they
recoil when approached, like a nest of vi- pers. “We used to be fishermen,” one sneers, drunk, seething with wounded pride. “But now we work for BP.” They won’t say more than that. From their perch, they glare across the silent street at the gorgeous marshland now closed to fishing. At dusk they screech away in pickup trucks, barely pausing at
the town’s one blinking traffic light. They surrender Leeville to shadow, to the mosquitoes, to what used to be and now isn’t, to a solemn reality captured in two words that embody the collapse of a way of life. Ghost town. This summer may mark the end of
Leeville, a town birthed by a hurricane, then destroyed by one, resurrected by oil and now destroyed by oil. It isn’t the only dying town outside the levee sys- tems in south Louisiana. Subsidence, the sinking of delta land, has long been the existential enemy down here. Now wild crude has delivered what may be the final blow, choking off commerce. Some residents foresee an abandoned landscape, something right out of a
Wild West movie, with empty slips in- stead of silent saloons, belly-up redfish instead of skittering tumbleweeds.
At the blinking traffic light, most drivers turn right and glide over the bayou to Port Fourchon, which services 90 percent of deep-water drilling struc- tures in the Gulf of Mexico. Then it’s on to Grand Isle, a paradise for sunbathers and beachfront property owners. Confused drivers proceed through the light, past the sign that says “NO OUTLET,” past two gas stations, four RV parks, a half-dozen bait-and-tackle shops, two motels and one bar, then run
leeville continued on C7 GALLERIES
On the pitch: Art vs. Design
by Jessica Dawson
test that could surpass Friday’s U.S. vs. Slovenia Group C match. Our contest: Art vs. Design. The Favorite: Art. Perfected by the Greeks and tweaked for millenniums, art has hosted history’s wiliest strikers and enjoyed countless championships. The Underdog: Design. The club has a strong history: Charles Rennie Mackin- tosh, Gerrit Rietveld and Marcel Du- champ made important contributions, elevating Team Design to championship levels. Yet prejudices linger. “Too com- mercial,” “Too entwined with consumer culture,” critics say. Or maybe just too close to everyday life for comfort? Team Art’s edge grew from its some- times guarded level of remove from quo- tidian affairs — these were objects to be admired, not touched or used. That ad- vantage fell away in the 20th century, and parsing significant differences be- tween the two clubs got harder.
H galleries continued on C8
ere at Galleries we’re in a World Cup frame of mind, so we’ve decid- ed to pit two arch rivals in a con-
COURTESY OF SILVERDOCS
OUT OF THE SHADOWS: In “Budrus,” a humble family man, Ayed Morrar, becomes a Palestinian activist.
Monday with the local premiere of “Frea- konomics,” is no exception. Like festivals everywhere, this one will feature its share of celebrity sightings. But instead of Paris Hilton or Woody Allen, nonfiction fans will be able to attend events featuring Oliver Stone (here with his essay film “South of the Border”), Danny Glover (who co-produced “The Disappearance
silverdocs continued on C3
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