Sydney filmmaker Roman Stills spent the last three years based in the US, where he made the short filmDixielandabout the influence of Dixieland jazz on the city of New Orleans. We asked him to talk us through the experience.
Did you travel to New Orleans with the express intention of shooting a film, or did the idea come about when you arrived?
My goal was to create video content while I was in the Deep South, but had no concept or film outline. Dixieland was inspired by my time with local actor Darius Raymond, who stars in the short film. After we met, he took me on a wild journey through the outskirts of New Orleans. Our first stop was his grandmother’s home, which was made of white weatherboard that had buckled over the last 100 years. I learnt that his parents, grandparents and great-grandparents had never left Louisiana. Darius’ concept of home is tied to physical space, and Dixieland music is a part of that space. It spurred me to think about how we build connections with private spaces and the cultural forces that shape those connections. This is fundamentally what Dixieland is about.
How important is Dixieland music to the New Orleans identity?
In my opinion, conversations about New Orleans’ identity cannot exist without Dixieland music. What I find particularly interesting is the relationship that Dixieland music had with the African-American Civil Rights Movement. Dixieland was a negative term for African-Americans, as its usage defined any area of the south where slaves remained oppressed. Today, the term Dixieland is used to describe of any form of jazz that is derived from early New Orleans jazz.
Dixieland plays with the idea of time and chronology – how did this help tell your story?
I wanted to acknowledge New Orleans’ sordid racial history in the film, while also referencing the city’s present and future. To do this, I imploded all traces of sequential time. The audience cannot tell if time moves forwards, backwards or loops.
Did you hope to capture an overview of life in New Orleans, or a specific musical aspect of it?
I didn’t think about it on those terms, but I guess, a specific musical aspect of life in New Orleans. More specifically, it is about the role Dixieland music had, has, and will continue to have, on community building in New Orleans.
Dixieland (dir. Roman Stills) will be screening at Blacklisted Gallery, Surry Hills onTuesday October 7.
