Produzione - Production: Folly River Films
Produttore - Producer: Margaret Brown, Sara Alize Cross
Sceneggiatura - Screenplay: Margaret Brown
Montaggio - Editing: Michael Taylor, Margaret Brown, Geoffrey Richman
Fotografia - Cinematography: Michael Simmonds, Lee Daniel, Frazer Bradshaw, Brian Hubbard
Distribuzione - Distribution: The Order of Myths
Margaret Brown, rakefilms@earthlink.net

Mobile, Alabama, 2007. In pieni festeggiamenti del Carnevale, lo spettatore assiste ad un giganteso ballo in maschera. Ma sotto le apparenze festose si nasconde qualcosa di più profondo.

In 2007 Mobile, Alabama, Mardi Gras is celebrated... and complicated. Following a cast of characters, parades, and parties across an enduring color line, we see that beneath the surface of pageantry lies something else altogether.
As winter turns to spring, Mobile, Alabama, buzzes and flutters with the floats, parades, masquerade balls, and secret mystic societies of Mardi Gras. The oldest Mardi Gras celebration in America, this time-honored ritual has always been racially segregated. Filmmaker Margaret Brown, herself a daughter of Mobile, escorts us into the parallel hearts of the city's two carnivals to explore the complex contours of this hallowed tradition and the elusive forces that keep it organized along color lines.

Taking a wonderfully restrained, observational approach that allows viewers to draw their own conclusions, Brown unveils the vibrant pageantry under way as ornate masks are donned, luminous gowns fitted, bejeweled trains painstakingly stitched, and the king and queen of each royal court trotted out at public appearances, parties, and coronations-within their distinct black and white realms, that is. Playfulness, reverence, and camaraderie suffuse the spectacles, generating genuine mirth and dignity in each community. Yet stories of a lynching as recent as 1981, and of the white Mardi Gras queen’s slave-trading ancestors, as well as subtle interracial social codes, cast a shadow on the proud Mobile heritage the white residents invoke. Do the recent formation of a racially integrated secret society and the attendance by this past year's black Mardi Gras monarchs at the white folks' ball augur cracks in a mysteriously enduring social order?

"Mardi Gras is, at its core, a ritual. For The Order of Myths, I was interested in documenting the nature of this ritual in its present form. This film is meant to be a document of that changes to the ritual - or its stasis.
Mardi Gras has always been important in my family - my mother was the white Mardi Gras queen in 1966, and my grandfather, Dwain Luce, is a member of the two oldest mystic organizations - the Order of Myths and the Strikers. Both organizations, which are highly secretive, have never allowed anyone outside their organization to document their events. Through my grandfather I was provided unprecedented access into a closed society.

I started this film as research for a narrative about my mother's ambivalence as Mardi Gras Queen. As I interviewed people for the script, I realized that this was a culture unlike any other, a foreign land in itself. I was struck by the way people in Mobile used the word "tradition" to explain their actions. Nothing had to be examined if it was based in tradition. Many of the things that went along with these traditions were exotic and beautiful; I could understand why people cherished them. Yet many of these traditions were deeply based in the skeleton of the South - namely, segregation. These traditions were accepted by almost everyone I came into contact with, black and white.

This acceptance was perplexing to me, and warranted examination. It became clear that this project had to be a documentary - this time and place had to be documented. The narrative could wait.
My intention was not to make a polemic about racism but rather film something observational that would allow the people of Mobile to reveal the reality of a racially polarized society. I want to give Mobile a perspective from an insider who has left for a while and then returned. At the same time, I hope to give the outside world a glimpse into a culture it may otherwise not see. Even though Mobile may seem in many ways unique, I am wondering if audiences will experience a glimmer of recognition".