Wade in the Water, Children

Following Hurricane Katrina, filmmakers Elizabeth Wood and Gabriel Nussbaum went to New Orleans' Singleton Charter Middle School with a unique mission: the duo gave video cameras to a number of sixth and eighth grade students and asked them to record their lives in the aftermath. The resulting footage provides uncommon first-person accounts of growing up in a disaster zone, with ruined homes, cramped FEMA trailers, frank confessions of fear and loss, and a harrowing look down streets destroyed by nature and abandoned to criminal elements. Wade in the Water, Children also offers an intriguing profile of the school itself, where exhausted teachers struggle to press ahead with an ambitious educational program in an overcrowded YMCA. Considering the nature of the project, it's not surprising that the video diaries feature amateur touches—ranging from shaky camerawork to the intrusion of clownish classmates hamming it up for the cameras—but the raw images and observations captured here are often profound, speaking to a remarkable resilience on the part of the children, even in the face of extraordinary squalor and decay. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (P. Hall)