Land of Opportunity

Land of Opportunity is the best film available about the community-development challenges facing post-Katrina New Orleans. But of course the real value of the film is that this process is not so unique after all. It is simply an exaggeration of the issues facing communities, residents and workers all across America.

Land of Opportunity may well be the best film on post-Katrina New Orleans, in part, because it effectively delimits our spatial and temporal understanding of Katrina. As Land of Opportunity brilliantly illustrates, the 2005 Hurricane and the catastrophic failure of the city's levee system was only the beginning of a multifaceted disaster that has deepened in many ways, long after the memory of Katrina proper has faded. Dantas kept her crew's cameras rolling in New Orleans long after most of the major news outlets had shifted to other matters, but her film offers a peerless examination of the public policies and economic forces shaping the city's tortuous rebirth.

Land of Opportunity is in the best tradition of social documentary and speaks powerfully to anybody thinking about post-disaster rebuilding, urban planning, racialized poverty, place and identity, citizenship and democracy, gentrification and privatization, US social movements, New Orleans and the United States.

Land of Opportunity joins a small list of documentaries essential to a nuanced understanding of the continuing impact of Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans. The film intervenes against forgetting by telling human stories of the lived experience of disaster capitalism..It is highly recommended for University Libraries and as a text for research and classroom teaching.

Land of Opportunity situates New Orleans after the 2005 hurricanes at a critical juncture of American urban life...The way that planning and development are depicted as living processes within people's varied lives make Land of Opportunity an invaluable resource for planning and urban studies educators.

For those of us looking for films that open doors for students to witness community change at multiple scales...Land of Opportunity fits the bill. Since the film is thoughtfully assembled with a sensitivity to the needs of educators, it creates classroom opportunities for discussion and exploration that can truly advance our work.

Race, gender, class, disaster, resilience: Land of Opportunity harnesses the keywords and dynamics of urban development to unfurl the story of the 21st century American City. Post- Katrina New Orleans provides the setting that is simultaneously distinctly New OrleanIan and American: interracial coalitions and racially divided political factions; working class Black women housing activists and multi-ethnic globally mobile housing designers; Central and South American migrant daylaborers and developers. People in the city must navigate the storm that hits with hurricane-force but is in fact an economic crisis produced by the failed infrastructure of free-market capitalist development. This is a New Orleans narrative that resonates with accounts of daily life in Chicago, Detroit, New York, San Francisco/Oakland.

Land of Opportunity tells a very significant narrative that needs to be heard and spotlights urban problems not widely understood...the footage speaks volumes.

Happening to a city near you" is the unsettling tag line for Land of Opportunity, a film that takes an intimate look at post-Katrina New Orleans and the interrelated struggles of those navigating it...Dantas captures the deep humanity and determination for justice that the film's subjects wield in face of crushing odds, allying the viewer with their struggles and their aspirations for home.

Land of Opportunity puts faces to the facts on the ground of post-Katrina New Orleans. Evocative and provocative, it is a compelling portrait of evacuation and return, race and citizenship, community and community organizing. Dantas' film follows a range of New Orleanians as they attempt to reclaim a normal existence -- access to their apartments, to electricity, to representation. Land of Opportunity speaks volumes for the thousands displaced and silenced by government manipulation in post-Katrina New Orleans.