For Educators
If you are an educator, we want to work with you!
Land of Opportunity is filled with teachable moments about the meaning of displacement, home and community, the power dynamics of race and gender, and ultimately, about the struggles for justice, equity, and fairness in a multiracial society.
We’ve recently joined New Day Films, the innovative filmmaker-run distribution company to distribute the Educational/Community version of our DVD. Working with New Day and getting the film into the hands of advocates, educators and students is an important part of our mission to share the lessons learned in New Orleans with the rest of the world. Educators and student groups are encouraged to set up screening events in collaboration with school departments or independently. Either way, we ask for your help in encouraging your school’s library to request the educational DVD. This way the film will be available to students and professors for years to come!
Purchase the Educational/Community version.
Exploring both dreams and realities, LAND OF OPPORTUNITY considers the possibilities and limits of development as an answer to Katrina. The film creates a mosaic of voices, including displaced residents, community organizers, immigrants, opportunists, environmentalists, and developers, and draws distinct, memorable characters.
LAND OF OPPORTUNITY joins a small list of documentaries essential to a nuanced understanding of the continuing impact Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans. I highly recommend it for university libraries and as a text for research and classroom teaching.
-Dr. Bernie Cook, Director of the Department of Film and Media Studies, Georgetown University
LAND OF OPPORTUNITY is fascinating as a piece that has so much texture and detail about organizing, policy and politics, but doesn’t have a certain thesis that is narrated over or shoved down your throat as the conclusion to what it all means. It’s a wonderful tool for teaching and provoking discussions.
-Kevin Whelan, Former Communications Director, ACORN
Given my appreciation for the central role of public meetings, your video recordings are priceless. They allow me to “attend” more meetings than I could possibly accomplish. They allow us to get beyond official press releases, official planning documents, and interpretations by a single news reporter.. But they are even better than that: they allow us to rewind and analyze in a variety of ways, they provide a verifiable record, and they allow us to go back in time to see this process once again as it actually occurred. Thank you again for providing us with this valuable research resource.
-Dr. Rob Olshansky, Professor of Urban Planning University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign