Once upon a time a girl named Cassandra lived on Abundance Street in a place called Desire.
It sounds like a fairy tale, right? But Desire is a housing project in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward. [And not just any project, Desire was one of the most infamous failures in American public housing until it was razed.] And 15-year-old Cassandra's life doesn't allow for fairy tales. What she has is a plan. A good student and a proud member of the marching band, she plans to graduate high school, join the service, then go to college for engineering.
One thing that's definitely not in her plan is having a baby.
Filmmaker Julie Gustafson originally came to Desire to make a documentary on the increasing normalization of teen pregnancy in underserved African-American communities. What she hadn't counted on was the tough matriarchy that ran the project, many of them former teen mothers themselves. These women had been studied six ways to Tuesday by a revolving cast of sociologists for so long that they'd gotten wise. And media savvy. You wanna film in Desire? Well, the Desire Area Group of activists wants to know what the community gets in return. Improvising, Gustafson offered to give free video classes to any girl who was interested, signed contracts with those girls who were then included in her documentary, and drew up royalty agreements.
Out of the Desire mothers' demands blossomed an idea. Why not give these video classes to other girls in different parts of New Orleans? And thus the documentary Desire, which the cinetrix saw in a sneak preview, was born. Soon Cassandra's story is joined with that of Tiffanie from Belle Chasse, a teen mom who has married the baby's father, Lee; Peggy, a first generation Chinese American at prestigious private school Newman; her classmate Tracy, whose parents expect nothing less than perfection; and Kimeca, like Cassandra, a resident of Desire and a teen mother of two who can't seem to stay in school.
Gustafson ultimately followed the girls for five years and worked on the film for 10. The resulting portraits are fascinating and heartbreaking. Straight-ahead doc footage of the various girls navigating their late teens is punctuated with excerpts from the girls' own short films about their desires. In one called "Boredom," Cassandra reveals that despite all her ambitious plans, she has become pregnant with neighborhood no-account Delvin's child. Seventeen-year-old Tiffanie struggles in her marriage and draws up rules. Number 3 is "Don't take Lee's shit." Kimeca tries to complete the 10th grade--again--but keeps missing classes to deal with her little boy's medical conditions.
Against the struggles of the teen moms, Newman students Peggy and Tracy could come off as lucky and a little whiny, but their desires and their feelings are no less real, no less valid. Tracy, especially, spoke to the cinetrix when she bucked her family and class expectations and worked at a video store rather than head off to a prestigious college. But Cassandra and Tiffanie are the ones who'll haunt your dreams.
As you can imagine, watching this film in the wake of the hurricane meant that the tears were never far from the surface. The girls were due to appear at the New Orleans Film Festival for a sneak preview last month, but now they, and indeed the filmmaker herself [her newly bought house submerged, she is currently bunking with old pal Barbara Kopple in Soho], have been scattered to the four winds.
According to Gustafson, the film may debut at the AFI in Los Angeles soon. Let's hope so. Despite its at times tendentious old school documentary approach to teen pregnancy, the film should be seen, if only to provide a counternarrative to the images of despair emanating from the Gulf over the past five weeks. Hell, put the Desire Area Group in charge of rebuilding--I don't think there's anything those women can't do.
Desire will be distributed by Women Make Movies.
