Ella Kliger was not satisfied just sitting in her Boston home watching the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina unfold on the Gulf Coast, so she decided to make a documentary. Now, two years after the storm, she is editing the footage here in Baton Rouge.
On Katrina’s one year anniversary she read an article in The Boston Phoenix and felt compelled to volunteer.
“I couldn’t believe the progress in some of these towns was so slow,” she said.
After volunteering, she was so moved by the stories of people in the area that she wanted to document it.
Called “The Kindness of Strangers: Katrina Connections,” the documentary puts a positive spin on a national disaster. It highlights the stories of more than 500,000 volunteers who have come to the Mississippi Gulf Coast so far, the so-called “Second Wave of Katrina.”
On the second anniversary of the storm this year, Kliger’s company, Reel Relief Production, LLC, posted a five minute segment of the documentary on YouTube.com. It ended its first day in the top 40 of the highest-rated videos.
“All you see is negative stuff about Katrina,” said University freshman Kristin McDonnel. “It’s nice to see something positive.”
General studies senior, Andrew Trufant, said he is tired of hearing about Katrina, but he might watch something with a positive aspect to it. It would be a lot better than Spike Lee’s documentary, he said.
Kliger originally planned to only volunteer in Mississippi for a month, but a year and a half later she is editing approximately 25 hours of film in Red Stick Studios thanks to a chance meeting and partnership with Chuck Bush of Resurgent Entertainment. The studio is located in Southgate Towers next to campus.
She started the project in September 2006, filming most of the documentary in D’Iberville, Miss., where 4,000 of the 8,000 residents lost their homes, she said.
“There were people there who said ‘I’m thankful my family survived the storm,’ and they were standing on a pile of rubble that used to be their house, without all of their worldly possessions,” Kliger said.
Kliger hopes to shed light on such moments of hope in her documentary.
“I hope we can show the good that can come out of bad,” she said.
In March, Kliger met and partnered with Bush of Resurgent Entertainment at the Mississippi Film Summit in Jackson, Miss. He decided to help produce her documentary without seeing footage.
“The heart of the message is what grabbed me,” said Bush, who orients his company around positive, values-based products.
Bush started Resurgent earlier this year, and it is one of a handful of companies he’s headed over a 23-year stint in the entertainment business.
Bush said the name of his company is “fitting in a post-Katrina world.”
Bush is a University alumnus, father of three and an ordained minister. He has worked as a chaplain both at Ground Zero in New York and along the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast.
Kliger said she hopes to inspire more volunteerism with the film, both along the Gulf Coast and in viewers’ hometowns.
“The nation seems to think things are back to normal after two years,” Bush said.
Kliger said that the only thing that won’t help is doing nothing.
“If it inspires just a few people to focus their efforts down here, then we’ve accomplished our goal,” she said.
They expect the film to be finished by this Thanksgiving.
“We’re coming up to the third holiday season with people homeless or displaced. I hope to inspire people to help get them home for Christmas,” Kliger said.
“The Kindness of Strangers” will eventually become a one-hour television program and a four-hour miniseries on DVD.
The program will be represented by Resurgent’s sales agents to national cable networks, including the Discovery Channel.
—Contact Lauren Walck at [email protected]