Telling Stories of Life, Death, and Culture in Louisiana: Interviews with Filmmakers Jacqueline Olive and Sharon Linezo Hong

ABSTRACT: Independent filmmakers Jaqueline Olive and Sharon Linezo Hong both have a relationship with the Gulf Coast that ties their work together, specifically the long effects of Hurricane Katrina. While Olive’s and Hong’s films cover different subjects—the COVID-19 pandemic and the BP Oil Spill, respectively—their shared desire to tell the stories of oft-neglected communities helps round out the historical understanding of Louisiana and the Gulf Coast. Though Olive’s and Hong’s canonical films are about some of the greatest tragedies of the twenty-first century, their works are equally about survival and ancestral tradition told from unique Black and Indigenous perspectives.