list http://www.spout.com/ Recent community activity around The Order of Myths on Spout Copyright 2005-9 Spout, LLC Spout RSS http://www.spout.com/images/SpoutLogoRSS.jpg http://www.spout.com/ 136 30 http://www.spout.com/films/The_Order_of_Myths/358648/default.aspx Title: The Order of Myths
Year: 2008
Director: Margaret Brown
Plot: In director Margaret Brown's The Order of Myths, she explores the parties, parades, and lesser known gatherings that encompass the hedonistic event known as Mardi Gras, discovering that complex issues of class, race, and politics are seldom left behind, even in the name of celebration. ~ Cammila Albertson, All Movie Guide
Times Tagged: 15
Number of Lists: 4
Number of blog posts: 10
SpoutRating: 4
]]>Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:01:49 GMTThe Order of Myths2008Margaret BrownIn director Margaret Brown's The Order of Myths, she explores the parties, parades, and lesser known gatherings that encompass the hedonistic event known as Mardi Gras, discovering that complex issues of class, race, and politics are seldom left behind, even in the name of celebration. ~ Cammila Albertson, All Movie Guide15Tag Target (>10)4104http://www.spout.com/ProductImages/s358648.jpghttp://www.spout.com/films/The_Order_of_Myths/358648/default.aspxFilm http://www.spout.com/blogs/karina/archive/2008/12/2/37849.aspx Post By: Karina
Post To: Karina on SpoutBlog
Post Date: 12/2/2008 2:01:49 PM
Body: The nominations for the 2008 Independent Spirit Awards are out, and there are a lot of causes for excitement. IndieWIRE has the full list; here are a few of the many reasons to celebrate: Silent Light, which still hasn’t officially been released in the US (although a run at NY’s Film Forum is pending), was nominated for best Foreign Film, alongside Cannes winners Hunger, Gomorrah and The Class, and the upcoming IFC release The Secret of the Grain. Three big nominations for Medicine for Melancholy: director Barry Jenkins and producer Justin Barber were nominated for Best First Feature, Jenkins was named alongside Nina Paley and Lynn Shelton as contenders for the Acura Someone to Watch Award, and James Laxton earned a nomination for Melancholy’s distinctive cinematography. Sean Baker competes against himself for the John Cassavetes Award for the best feature made for under $500,000; Prince of Broadway and Take Out were nominated alongside The Signal, Turn the River, and In Search of a Midnight Kiss. SpoutBlog favorites The Order of Myths, Encounters at the End of the World, The Betrayal and Man on WireUp the Yangtze join in the Best Documentary category; Myths director Margaret Brown was also nominated for the Lacost Truer Than Fiction prize, which goes to an upcoming nonfiction filmmaker. On the bigger film front, Rachel Getting Married, The Wrestler and Vicky Cristina Barcelona were amongst the most nominated films; Woody Allen will compete in the Screenplay category against fellow Oscar winner Charlie Kaufman. The full list of nominees can be found here. The Spirits will be handed out, as per tradition, the night before the Oscars in Santa Monica. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth
]]>Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:01:49 GMTKarinaKarina on SpoutBlog12/2/2008 2:01:49 PMThe nominations for the 2008 Independent Spirit Awards are out, and there are a lot of causes for excitement. IndieWIRE has the full list; here are a few of the many reasons to celebrate: Silent Light, which still hasn’t officially been released in the US (although a run at NY’s Film Forum is pending), was nominated for best Foreign Film, alongside Cannes winners Hunger, Gomorrah and The Class, and the upcoming IFC release The Secret of the Grain. Three big nominations for Medicine for Melancholy: director Barry Jenkins and producer Justin Barber were nominated for Best First Feature, Jenkins was named alongside Nina Paley and Lynn Shelton as contenders for the Acura Someone to Watch Award, and James Laxton earned a nomination for Melancholy’s distinctive cinematography. Sean Baker competes against himself for the John Cassavetes Award for the best feature made for under $500,000; Prince of Broadway and Take Out were nominated alongside The Signal, Turn the River, and In Search of a Midnight Kiss. SpoutBlog favorites The Order of Myths, Encounters at the End of the World, The Betrayal and Man on WireUp the Yangtze join in the Best Documentary category; Myths director Margaret Brown was also nominated for the Lacost Truer Than Fiction prize, which goes to an upcoming nonfiction filmmaker. On the bigger film front, Rachel Getting Married, The Wrestler and Vicky Cristina Barcelona were amongst the most nominated films; Woody Allen will compete in the Screenplay category against fellow Oscar winner Charlie Kaufman. The full list of nominees can be found here. The Spirits will be handed out, as per tradition, the night before the Oscars in Santa Monica. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/12/2/37848.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 12/2/2008 2:01:34 PM
Body: The nominations for the 2008 Independent Spirit Awards are out, and there are a lot of causes for excitement. IndieWIRE has the full list; here are a few of the many reasons to celebrate: Silent Light, which still hasn’t officially been released in the US (although a run at NY’s Film Forum is pending), was nominated for best Foreign Film, alongside Cannes winners Hunger, Gomorrah and The Class, and the upcoming IFC release The Secret of the Grain. Three big nominations for Medicine for Melancholy: director Barry Jenkins and producer Justin Barber were nominated for Best First Feature, Jenkins was named alongside Nina Paley and Lynn Shelton as contenders for the Acura Someone to Watch Award, and James Laxton earned a nomination for Melancholy’s distinctive cinematography. Sean Baker competes against himself for the John Cassavetes Award for the best feature made for under $500,000; Prince of Broadway and Take Out were nominated alongside The Signal, Turn the River, and In Search of a Midnight Kiss. SpoutBlog favorites The Order of Myths, Encounters at the End of the World, The Betrayal and Man on WireUp the Yangtze join in the Best Documentary category; Myths director Margaret Brown was also nominated for the Lacost Truer Than Fiction prize, which goes to an upcoming nonfiction filmmaker. On the bigger film front, Rachel Getting Married, The Wrestler and Vicky Cristina Barcelona were amongst the most nominated films; Woody Allen will compete in the Screenplay category against fellow Oscar winner Charlie Kaufman. The full list of nominees can be found here. The Spirits will be handed out, as per tradition, the night before the Oscars in Santa Monica. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:01:34 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com12/2/2008 2:01:34 PMThe nominations for the 2008 Independent Spirit Awards are out, and there are a lot of causes for excitement. IndieWIRE has the full list; here are a few of the many reasons to celebrate: Silent Light, which still hasn’t officially been released in the US (although a run at NY’s Film Forum is pending), was nominated for best Foreign Film, alongside Cannes winners Hunger, Gomorrah and The Class, and the upcoming IFC release The Secret of the Grain. Three big nominations for Medicine for Melancholy: director Barry Jenkins and producer Justin Barber were nominated for Best First Feature, Jenkins was named alongside Nina Paley and Lynn Shelton as contenders for the Acura Someone to Watch Award, and James Laxton earned a nomination for Melancholy’s distinctive cinematography. Sean Baker competes against himself for the John Cassavetes Award for the best feature made for under $500,000; Prince of Broadway and Take Out were nominated alongside The Signal, Turn the River, and In Search of a Midnight Kiss. SpoutBlog favorites The Order of Myths, Encounters at the End of the World, The Betrayal and Man on WireUp the Yangtze join in the Best Documentary category; Myths director Margaret Brown was also nominated for the Lacost Truer Than Fiction prize, which goes to an upcoming nonfiction filmmaker. On the bigger film front, Rachel Getting Married, The Wrestler and Vicky Cristina Barcelona were amongst the most nominated films; Woody Allen will compete in the Screenplay category against fellow Oscar winner Charlie Kaufman. The full list of nominees can be found here. The Spirits will be handed out, as per tradition, the night before the Oscars in Santa Monica. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/karina/archive/2008/7/21/32856.aspx Post By: Karina
Post To: Karina on SpoutBlog
Post Date: 7/21/2008 6:01:22 PM
Body: Shopping With Filmmakers: Margaret Brown Margaret Brown’s The Order of Myths opens at the IFC Center in New York on Friday. This review is adapted from our coverage of the film at the SXSW Film Festival, where we also interviewed the director. Above: Brown shops and talks at Sundance. Margaret Brown’s The Order of Myths offers an immersion into the archaic miasma that is the world’s oldest Mardi Gras celebration, in Mobile, Alabama, where tradition mandates that the two weeks worth of parties and parades are mostly racially segregated. Using Mardi Gras season as a microcosm for a portrait of contemporary race relations in the city, Brown gets a filmmaker’s dream gift in the black and white Mardi Gras associations’ selection of their queens. Queen Stephanie, a black schoolteacher, is a descendant of a group of slaves who were transported on the Clothilde, the last slave ship to enter the US. When the Clothilde came ashore, there was a fire and the passengers escaped into the woods, ultimately settling in an area that came to be known as Africatown. Queen Helen Meaher, whose family now owns most of the land in Africatown, is a descendant of the company that brought the Clothilde over. “My people was on her people’s ship,” Stephanie says, with a slow, matter-of-fact nod. That nod confirms the film’s thesis: racism isn’t an outrage or even a spoken issue Mobile––it’s casual, habitual, and historically excused. Blending highly controlled fly-on-the-wall verite action with talking head contextualization, Myths finds an unusual tonal sweet spot somewhere in between absurdist comedy and studious melancholy, in its consideration of two groups at a socio-historical impasse. Both the black and white camps invest an inordinate amount of money in their celebrations––Queen Stephanie describes her Mardi Gras budget as being equivalent to “a good car, a car and a half”––and Brown plumbs the bejeweled spoils of these expenditures both as comic relief, and as a marker of difference. Helen and the members of her court seem to spend the Mardi Gras pre-season doing nothing but sipping out of silver goblets and trying on headdresses, all with the kind of nonchalance that could only come from people accustomed to indulgence. Queen Stephanie and her king spend their days working at the same grade school, where their experience of Mardi Gras is partially filtered through stories read by their students. Mardi Gras is a one-time-only investment for Stephanie, but it pays dividends in pure emotional experience to her extended social network. Certainly, the Meagher family never comments on how much Helen’s reign costs, and Helen herself seems to treat the whole endeavor as less of an honor than an obligation. In his Variety review of the film, the progressively problematic John Anderson criticized Brown for essentially mocking her subjects, and while I think that’s a misguided read, I can see where he gets it. It’s not until one of the film’s final frames, in which Brown reveals that one of her talking head sources, a mystic society member and husband of a former Queen who is most adamantly in favor of Mardi Gras segregation, is the filmmaker’s grandfather. Without that admission, The Order of Myths might feel like an outsider’s caricature, but with it, everything that proceeds it is colored as a personal story. Brown is not, as Anderson puts it, out to “make some easy targets look ridiculous”––she’s grappling with her own heritage through an outward-directed portrait of those who share it and those who have been historically at odds with it. It’s a personal doc in which the person gracefully bounces the spotlight on to others. To imply that this kind of subtle, displaced autobiography is exploitative, especially in contrast to some of the more self-indulgent works of non-fiction coming off the festival circuit, feels like a knee-jerk miscalculation. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth
]]>Mon, 21 Jul 2008 22:01:22 GMTKarinaKarina on SpoutBlog7/21/2008 6:01:22 PMShopping With Filmmakers: Margaret Brown Margaret Brown’s The Order of Myths opens at the IFC Center in New York on Friday. This review is adapted from our coverage of the film at the SXSW Film Festival, where we also interviewed the director. Above: Brown shops and talks at Sundance. Margaret Brown’s The Order of Myths offers an immersion into the archaic miasma that is the world’s oldest Mardi Gras celebration, in Mobile, Alabama, where tradition mandates that the two weeks worth of parties and parades are mostly racially segregated. Using Mardi Gras season as a microcosm for a portrait of contemporary race relations in the city, Brown gets a filmmaker’s dream gift in the black and white Mardi Gras associations’ selection of their queens. Queen Stephanie, a black schoolteacher, is a descendant of a group of slaves who were transported on the Clothilde, the last slave ship to enter the US. When the Clothilde came ashore, there was a fire and the passengers escaped into the woods, ultimately settling in an area that came to be known as Africatown. Queen Helen Meaher, whose family now owns most of the land in Africatown, is a descendant of the company that brought the Clothilde over. “My people was on her people’s ship,” Stephanie says, with a slow, matter-of-fact nod. That nod confirms the film’s thesis: racism isn’t an outrage or even a spoken issue Mobile––it’s casual, habitual, and historically excused. Blending highly controlled fly-on-the-wall verite action with talking head contextualization, Myths finds an unusual tonal sweet spot somewhere in between absurdist comedy and studious melancholy, in its consideration of two groups at a socio-historical impasse. Both the black and white camps invest an inordinate amount of money in their celebrations––Queen Stephanie describes her Mardi Gras budget as being equivalent to “a good car, a car and a half”––and Brown plumbs the bejeweled spoils of these expenditures both as comic relief, and as a marker of difference. Helen and the members of her court seem to spend the Mardi Gras pre-season doing nothing but sipping out of silver goblets and trying on headdresses, all with the kind of nonchalance that could only come from people accustomed to indulgence. Queen Stephanie and her king spend their days working at the same grade school, where their experience of Mardi Gras is partially filtered through stories read by their students. Mardi Gras is a one-time-only investment for Stephanie, but it pays dividends in pure emotional experience to her extended social network. Certainly, the Meagher family never comments on how much Helen’s reign costs, and Helen herself seems to treat the whole endeavor as less of an honor than an obligation. In his Variety review of the film, the progressively problematic John Anderson criticized Brown for essentially mocking her subjects, and while I think that’s a misguided read, I can see where he gets it. It’s not until one of the film’s final frames, in which Brown reveals that one of her talking head sources, a mystic society member and husband of a former Queen who is most adamantly in favor of Mardi Gras segregation, is the filmmaker’s grandfather. Without that admission, The Order of Myths might feel like an outsider’s caricature, but with it, everything that proceeds it is colored as a personal story. Brown is not, as Anderson puts it, out to “make some easy targets look ridiculous”––she’s grappling with her own heritage through an outward-directed portrait of those who share it and those who have been historically at odds with it. It’s a personal doc in which the person gracefully bounces the spotlight on to others. To imply that this kind of subtle, displaced autobiography is exploitative, especially in contrast to some of the more self-indulgent works of non-fiction coming off the festival circuit, feels like a knee-jerk miscalculation. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/7/21/32855.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 7/21/2008 6:01:13 PM
Body: Shopping With Filmmakers: Margaret Brown Margaret Brown’s The Order of Myths opens at the IFC Center in New York on Friday. This review is adapted from our coverage of the film at the SXSW Film Festival, where we also interviewed the director. Above: Brown shops and talks at Sundance. Margaret Brown’s The Order of Myths offers an immersion into the archaic miasma that is the world’s oldest Mardi Gras celebration, in Mobile, Alabama, where tradition mandates that the two weeks worth of parties and parades are mostly racially segregated. Using Mardi Gras season as a microcosm for a portrait of contemporary race relations in the city, Brown gets a filmmaker’s dream gift in the black and white Mardi Gras associations’ selection of their queens. Queen Stephanie, a black schoolteacher, is a descendant of a group of slaves who were transported on the Clothilde, the last slave ship to enter the US. When the Clothilde came ashore, there was a fire and the passengers escaped into the woods, ultimately settling in an area that came to be known as Africatown. Queen Helen Meaher, whose family now owns most of the land in Africatown, is a descendant of the company that brought the Clothilde over. “My people was on her people’s ship,” Stephanie says, with a slow, matter-of-fact nod. That nod confirms the film’s thesis: racism isn’t an outrage or even a spoken issue Mobile––it’s casual, habitual, and historically excused. Blending highly controlled fly-on-the-wall verite action with talking head contextualization, Myths finds an unusual tonal sweet spot somewhere in between absurdist comedy and studious melancholy, in its consideration of two groups at a socio-historical impasse. Both the black and white camps invest an inordinate amount of money in their celebrations––Queen Stephanie describes her Mardi Gras budget as being equivalent to “a good car, a car and a half”––and Brown plumbs the bejeweled spoils of these expenditures both as comic relief, and as a marker of difference. Helen and the members of her court seem to spend the Mardi Gras pre-season doing nothing but sipping out of silver goblets and trying on headdresses, all with the kind of nonchalance that could only come from people accustomed to indulgence. Queen Stephanie and her king spend their days working at the same grade school, where their experience of Mardi Gras is partially filtered through stories read by their students. Mardi Gras is a one-time-only investment for Stephanie, but it pays dividends in pure emotional experience to her extended social network. Certainly, the Meagher family never comments on how much Helen’s reign costs, and Helen herself seems to treat the whole endeavor as less of an honor than an obligation. In his Variety review of the film, the progressively problematic John Anderson criticized Brown for essentially mocking her subjects, and while I think that’s a misguided read, I can see where he gets it. It’s not until one of the film’s final frames, in which Brown reveals that one of her talking head sources, a mystic society member and husband of a former Queen who is most adamantly in favor of Mardi Gras segregation, is the filmmaker’s grandfather. Without that admission, The Order of Myths might feel like an outsider’s caricature, but with it, everything that proceeds it is colored as a personal story. Brown is not, as Anderson puts it, out to “make some easy targets look ridiculous”––she’s grappling with her own heritage through an outward-directed portrait of those who share it and those who have been historically at odds with it. It’s a personal doc in which the person gracefully bounces the spotlight on to others. To imply that this kind of subtle, displaced autobiography is exploitative, especially in contrast to some of the more self-indulgent works of non-fiction coming off the festival circuit, feels like a knee-jerk miscalculation. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Mon, 21 Jul 2008 22:01:13 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com7/21/2008 6:01:13 PMShopping With Filmmakers: Margaret Brown Margaret Brown’s The Order of Myths opens at the IFC Center in New York on Friday. This review is adapted from our coverage of the film at the SXSW Film Festival, where we also interviewed the director. Above: Brown shops and talks at Sundance. Margaret Brown’s The Order of Myths offers an immersion into the archaic miasma that is the world’s oldest Mardi Gras celebration, in Mobile, Alabama, where tradition mandates that the two weeks worth of parties and parades are mostly racially segregated. Using Mardi Gras season as a microcosm for a portrait of contemporary race relations in the city, Brown gets a filmmaker’s dream gift in the black and white Mardi Gras associations’ selection of their queens. Queen Stephanie, a black schoolteacher, is a descendant of a group of slaves who were transported on the Clothilde, the last slave ship to enter the US. When the Clothilde came ashore, there was a fire and the passengers escaped into the woods, ultimately settling in an area that came to be known as Africatown. Queen Helen Meaher, whose family now owns most of the land in Africatown, is a descendant of the company that brought the Clothilde over. “My people was on her people’s ship,” Stephanie says, with a slow, matter-of-fact nod. That nod confirms the film’s thesis: racism isn’t an outrage or even a spoken issue Mobile––it’s casual, habitual, and historically excused. Blending highly controlled fly-on-the-wall verite action with talking head contextualization, Myths finds an unusual tonal sweet spot somewhere in between absurdist comedy and studious melancholy, in its consideration of two groups at a socio-historical impasse. Both the black and white camps invest an inordinate amount of money in their celebrations––Queen Stephanie describes her Mardi Gras budget as being equivalent to “a good car, a car and a half”––and Brown plumbs the bejeweled spoils of these expenditures both as comic relief, and as a marker of difference. Helen and the members of her court seem to spend the Mardi Gras pre-season doing nothing but sipping out of silver goblets and trying on headdresses, all with the kind of nonchalance that could only come from people accustomed to indulgence. Queen Stephanie and her king spend their days working at the same grade school, where their experience of Mardi Gras is partially filtered through stories read by their students. Mardi Gras is a one-time-only investment for Stephanie, but it pays dividends in pure emotional experience to her extended social network. Certainly, the Meagher family never comments on how much Helen’s reign costs, and Helen herself seems to treat the whole endeavor as less of an honor than an obligation. In his Variety review of the film, the progressively problematic John Anderson criticized Brown for essentially mocking her subjects, and while I think that’s a misguided read, I can see where he gets it. It’s not until one of the film’s final frames, in which Brown reveals that one of her talking head sources, a mystic society member and husband of a former Queen who is most adamantly in favor of Mardi Gras segregation, is the filmmaker’s grandfather. Without that admission, The Order of Myths might feel like an outsider’s caricature, but with it, everything that proceeds it is colored as a personal story. Brown is not, as Anderson puts it, out to “make some easy targets look ridiculous”––she’s grappling with her own heritage through an outward-directed portrait of those who share it and those who have been historically at odds with it. It’s a personal doc in which the person gracefully bounces the spotlight on to others. To imply that this kind of subtle, displaced autobiography is exploitative, especially in contrast to some of the more self-indulgent works of non-fiction coming off the festival circuit, feels like a knee-jerk miscalculation. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/tenenbaums/archive/2008/5/20/29630.aspx Post By: Tenenbaums
Post To: Tenenbaums Blog
Post Date: 5/20/2008 11:45:29 PM
Body: Having spoken with Margaret Brown for the Daily Tar Heel preview piece on documentaries and the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, the screening of "The Order of Myths" easily became the most anticipated film of the festival. After learning of the film from Filmspotting's Sundance coverage, I relayed the information to Dr. W. Barnes Tatum, a native of Mobile, Ala., the film's setting. He quickly found out that Brown is the niece of a childhood friend of his, and the connection for the valuable interview was established.Barnes and his wife Linda joined me in the theatre for the Full Frame screening, serving as a direct Mobile resource should questions arise. Mobile, Ala. is home to the nation's oldest Mardi Gras festival. During the two weeks of pageants and parades, the locals abide by a tradition of racially segregated celebrations, simultaneously exposing behavior that is both taboo and honored.Director Margaret Brown's expert use of irony and social commentary in "The Order of Myths" is as captivating as the elaborate and pricey galas of the 2007 occurrence. The uncomfortably real moments are most evident through a running theme of whites making reference to future hopes for equality, then handing off a discarded piece of china to a black server working an all-white event. The tension peaks when members of the black Mardi Gras queen's family comment that their ancestors were brought to Mobile on the slave ship Clotilda by ancestors of the white queen's family. The just-so manner in which the black family references its past is consistent throughout the film, keeping tensions to a minimum but acknowledging them nonetheless.The sense of ambivalence is also prevalent on the white side. Comments are made concerning hopes for integrated celebrations, but the same people later express a desire for maintaining the rich traditions that are enjoyed by each group. Folks acknowledge the touchiness of the situation and how the Mobile celebrations are different by exhibiting such throwback values, but few are in a hurry to make a change.An additional layer of intrigue is found in the film's first interviewee, a friendly-looking and eerily familiar older Southern gentleman. His second appearance identified him as Dwain Luce and it clicked that he was featured in Ken Burns' "The War." Curious if Luce's celebrity status had influenced Brown's editing decision to place him at the film's opening, those wonderings were shattered in Luce's final clip when an additional identifier appeared below his name: "My Grandfather." At that moment, a world of connections were established, tying the film and Mobile and Brown to Barnes and Burns and me! It was a stunning epiphany that made me feel, through my dual-film appreciation of Luce and rapport with Brown, like Dwain Luce's unknown friend. Barnes called the film "flawless as film and social commentary" and "the perfect autopsy of Mobile."
]]>Wed, 21 May 2008 03:45:29 GMTTenenbaumsTenenbaums Blog5/20/2008 11:45:29 PMHaving spoken with Margaret Brown for the Daily Tar Heel preview piece on documentaries and the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, the screening of "The Order of Myths" easily became the most anticipated film of the festival. After learning of the film from Filmspotting's Sundance coverage, I relayed the information to Dr. W. Barnes Tatum, a native of Mobile, Ala., the film's setting. He quickly found out that Brown is the niece of a childhood friend of his, and the connection for the valuable interview was established.Barnes and his wife Linda joined me in the theatre for the Full Frame screening, serving as a direct Mobile resource should questions arise. Mobile, Ala. is home to the nation's oldest Mardi Gras festival. During the two weeks of pageants and parades, the locals abide by a tradition of racially segregated celebrations, simultaneously exposing behavior that is both taboo and honored.Director Margaret Brown's expert use of irony and social commentary in "The Order of Myths" is as captivating as the elaborate and pricey galas of the 2007 occurrence. The uncomfortably real moments are most evident through a running theme of whites making reference to future hopes for equality, then handing off a discarded piece of china to a black server working an all-white event. The tension peaks when members of the black Mardi Gras queen's family comment that their ancestors were brought to Mobile on the slave ship Clotilda by ancestors of the white queen's family. The just-so manner in which the black family references its past is consistent throughout the film, keeping tensions to a minimum but acknowledging them nonetheless.The sense of ambivalence is also prevalent on the white side. Comments are made concerning hopes for integrated celebrations, but the same people later express a desire for maintaining the rich traditions that are enjoyed by each group. Folks acknowledge the touchiness of the situation and how the Mobile celebrations are different by exhibiting such throwback values, but few are in a hurry to make a change.An additional layer of intrigue is found in the film's first interviewee, a friendly-looking and eerily familiar older Southern gentleman. His second appearance identified him as Dwain Luce and it clicked that he was featured in Ken Burns' "The War." Curious if Luce's celebrity status had influenced Brown's editing decision to place him at the film's opening, those wonderings were shattered in Luce's final clip when an additional identifier appeared below his name: "My Grandfather." At that moment, a world of connections were established, tying the film and Mobile and Brown to Barnes and Burns and me! It was a stunning epiphany that made me feel, through my dual-film appreciation of Luce and rapport with Brown, like Dwain Luce's unknown friend. Barnes called the film "flawless as film and social commentary" and "the perfect autopsy of Mobile." http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/3/12/26134.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 3/12/2008 1:01:16 PM
Body: Margaret Brown’s documentary The Order of Myths delves into the secret societies of Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama. I talked to Margaret about segregation, access to forbidden parties, and shooting in formal wear. Be sure to check out Karina’s review of the film here. SXSW news, reviews, interviews and discussions Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Wed, 12 Mar 2008 17:01:16 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com3/12/2008 1:01:16 PM Margaret Brown’s documentary The Order of Myths delves into the secret societies of Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama. I talked to Margaret about segregation, access to forbidden parties, and shooting in formal wear. Be sure to check out Karina’s review of the film here. SXSW news, reviews, interviews and discussions Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/karina/archive/2008/3/9/26011.aspx Post By: Karina
Post To: Karina on SpoutBlog
Post Date: 3/9/2008 4:01:05 PM
Body: Margaret Brown’s The Order of Myths is an immersion into the archaic miasma that is Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama. Mobile’s Mardi Gras is the oldest in the world, and in keeping with tradition, its two weeks worth of parties and parades are mostly segregated. Using Mardi Gras season as a microcosm for a portrait of contemporary race relations in the city, Brown gets a filmmaker’s dream gift in the black and white Mardi Gras associations’ selection of their queens. Queen Stephanie, a black schoolteacher, is a descendant of slaves who were transported on the Clothilde, the last slave ship to enter the US. When the Clothilde came ashore, there was a fire and the passengers escaped into the woods, ultimately settling in an area that came to be known as Africatown. Queen Helen Meaher, whose family now owns most of the land in Africatown, is a descendant of the company that brought the Clothilde over. “My people was on her people’s ship,” Stephanie says, with a slow, matter-of-fact nod. That nod confirms the film’s thesis: casual racism is not an outrage in Mobile, it’s an institution. (more…) Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » karina
]]>Sun, 09 Mar 2008 20:01:05 GMTKarinaKarina on SpoutBlog3/9/2008 4:01:05 PM Margaret Brown’s The Order of Myths is an immersion into the archaic miasma that is Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama. Mobile’s Mardi Gras is the oldest in the world, and in keeping with tradition, its two weeks worth of parties and parades are mostly segregated. Using Mardi Gras season as a microcosm for a portrait of contemporary race relations in the city, Brown gets a filmmaker’s dream gift in the black and white Mardi Gras associations’ selection of their queens. Queen Stephanie, a black schoolteacher, is a descendant of slaves who were transported on the Clothilde, the last slave ship to enter the US. When the Clothilde came ashore, there was a fire and the passengers escaped into the woods, ultimately settling in an area that came to be known as Africatown. Queen Helen Meaher, whose family now owns most of the land in Africatown, is a descendant of the company that brought the Clothilde over. “My people was on her people’s ship,” Stephanie says, with a slow, matter-of-fact nod. That nod confirms the film’s thesis: casual racism is not an outrage in Mobile, it’s an institution. (more…) Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » karina http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/3/9/26009.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 3/9/2008 4:00:53 PM
Body: Margaret Brown’s The Order of Myths is an immersion into the archaic miasma that is Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama. Mobile’s Mardi Gras is the oldest in the world, and in keeping with tradition, its two weeks worth of parties and parades are mostly segregated. Using Mardi Gras season as a microcosm for a portrait of contemporary race relations in the city, Brown gets a filmmaker’s dream gift in the black and white Mardi Gras associations’ selection of their queens. Queen Stephanie, a black schoolteacher, is a descendant of slaves who were transported on the Clothilde, the last slave ship to enter the US. When the Clothilde came ashore, there was a fire and the passengers escaped into the woods, ultimately settling in an area that came to be known as Africatown. Queen Helen Meaher, whose family now owns most of the land in Africatown, is a descendant of the company that brought the Clothilde over. “My people was on her people’s ship,” Stephanie says, with a slow, matter-of-fact nod. That nod confirms the film’s thesis: casual racism is not an outrage in Mobile, it’s an institution. (more…) Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Sun, 09 Mar 2008 20:00:53 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com3/9/2008 4:00:53 PM Margaret Brown’s The Order of Myths is an immersion into the archaic miasma that is Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama. Mobile’s Mardi Gras is the oldest in the world, and in keeping with tradition, its two weeks worth of parties and parades are mostly segregated. Using Mardi Gras season as a microcosm for a portrait of contemporary race relations in the city, Brown gets a filmmaker’s dream gift in the black and white Mardi Gras associations’ selection of their queens. Queen Stephanie, a black schoolteacher, is a descendant of slaves who were transported on the Clothilde, the last slave ship to enter the US. When the Clothilde came ashore, there was a fire and the passengers escaped into the woods, ultimately settling in an area that came to be known as Africatown. Queen Helen Meaher, whose family now owns most of the land in Africatown, is a descendant of the company that brought the Clothilde over. “My people was on her people’s ship,” Stephanie says, with a slow, matter-of-fact nod. That nod confirms the film’s thesis: casual racism is not an outrage in Mobile, it’s an institution. (more…) Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/karina/archive/2008/1/22/24235.aspx Post By: Karina
Post To: Karina on SpoutBlog
Post Date: 1/22/2008 7:01:18 PM
Body: If you’ve watched the last two episodes of our Sundance video coverage, you’ve learned a little bit about the spoils of Sundance swag. Designer pooper scoops are great and all, but I always like to see filmmakers passing out something that promotes their film in a clever way. In the industry lounge a few minutes ago, I stumbled over a friend of filmmaker Margaret Brown, who was affixing stickers for Browns’ The Order of Myths to a carton full of Mini Moon Pies. Moon Pies play a surprisingly significant role in Brown’s film, which is otherwise about race relations and Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama. It probably goes without saying, but this kind of thing is so much more interesting and valuable to a weary journalist than a bag full of random corporate stuff. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » karina
]]>Wed, 23 Jan 2008 00:01:18 GMTKarinaKarina on SpoutBlog1/22/2008 7:01:18 PM If you’ve watched the last two episodes of our Sundance video coverage, you’ve learned a little bit about the spoils of Sundance swag. Designer pooper scoops are great and all, but I always like to see filmmakers passing out something that promotes their film in a clever way. In the industry lounge a few minutes ago, I stumbled over a friend of filmmaker Margaret Brown, who was affixing stickers for Browns’ The Order of Myths to a carton full of Mini Moon Pies. Moon Pies play a surprisingly significant role in Brown’s film, which is otherwise about race relations and Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama. It probably goes without saying, but this kind of thing is so much more interesting and valuable to a weary journalist than a bag full of random corporate stuff. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » karina http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/1/22/24234.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 1/22/2008 7:01:09 PM
Body: If you’ve watched the last two episodes of our Sundance video coverage, you’ve learned a little bit about the spoils of Sundance swag. Designer pooper scoops are great and all, but I always like to see filmmakers passing out something that promotes their film in a clever way. In the industry lounge a few minutes ago, I stumbled over a friend of filmmaker Margaret Brown, who was affixing stickers for Browns’ The Order of Myths to a carton full of Mini Moon Pies. Moon Pies play a surprisingly significant role in Brown’s film, which is otherwise about race relations and Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama. It probably goes without saying, but this kind of thing is so much more interesting and valuable to a weary journalist than a bag full of random corporate stuff. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Wed, 23 Jan 2008 00:01:09 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com1/22/2008 7:01:09 PM If you’ve watched the last two episodes of our Sundance video coverage, you’ve learned a little bit about the spoils of Sundance swag. Designer pooper scoops are great and all, but I always like to see filmmakers passing out something that promotes their film in a clever way. In the industry lounge a few minutes ago, I stumbled over a friend of filmmaker Margaret Brown, who was affixing stickers for Browns’ The Order of Myths to a carton full of Mini Moon Pies. Moon Pies play a surprisingly significant role in Brown’s film, which is otherwise about race relations and Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama. It probably goes without saying, but this kind of thing is so much more interesting and valuable to a weary journalist than a bag full of random corporate stuff. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/politics/MemberTagFilms.aspxpolitics
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]]>Thu, 24 Sep 2009 02:07:10 GMT1825230Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/discrimination/MemberTagFilms.aspxdiscrimination
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]]>Sat, 11 Jul 2009 05:50:02 GMT21346Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/racerelations/MemberTagFilms.aspxracerelations
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]]>Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:58:59 GMT37253Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/Mardi-Gras/MemberTagFilms.aspxMardi-Gras
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]]>Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:02:39 GMT3222Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/south-by-south-west/MemberTagFilms.aspxsouth-by-south-west
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