Varsity Theatre to screen new Hurricane Katrina film

As tornadoes and floods dominate the summer headlines, one filmmaker is claiming that one of the worst natural disasters in American history was anything but natural.

On Friday, “The Big Uneasy” opens at the Varsity Theatre on Franklin Street. The film stresses that the same artificial failures that intensified the damage of Hurricane Katrina are still present in New Orleans.

Harry Shearer, the film’s director and a resident of New Orleans, is a comedian famous for his voice acting on “The Simpsons.” He stepped away from his comedy roots to show what he believes were the main sources of damage in the Katrina catastrophe, including faulty designs by the US Army Corps of Engineers, he said.

Recently, the Corps completed a levee system designed to protect the city from a once-in-a-century storm, said Rick Luettich, director of the University’s Center for the Study of Natural Hazards and Disasters.

But even this system is inadequate, Shearer said.

“The pumps never passed their tests even when the standards were continuously lowered to try to make them pass,” Shearer said. “They still didn’t pass. They were installed anyway.”

The film follows three individuals — two of whom investigated the causes of the 2005 flooding. The third is a whistleblower in the Corps in charge of installing the pumps in the new system.

Shearer said he had had enough of the media perpetuating the hurricane as a natural disaster, and decided to take the film on the road as a way to raise awareness with local media around the United States.

“I decided to make the film in October of 2009 when President Obama came to New Orleans and told the town hall meeting that the flooding was a natural disaster,” Shearer said.

Paul Shareshian, owner of the Varsity Theatre, said the film has received critical praise.

“I think it’s a good movie,” Shareshian said. “It looked interesting. It won some awards here and there.”

Shearer said his film serves as a warning of future design-related disasters that could occur in cities also protected by the Corps’ systems.

“The Corps was given responsibility for managing the Mississippi River and the Missouri River,” Shearer said. “So you have a lot of people angry at the Corps up and down the river.”

Luettich was on a review committee for the Corps’ new system in New Orleans. He said the committee felt the new system was inadequate.

“We can’t prevent the hazard, but what we hopefully can do is prevent that hazard from becoming a disaster,” Luettich said. “That all boils down to the concept of resiliency.”

Luettich said he thinks the movie’s message can be taken as a reminder that communities need to be better prepared to handle these types of situations.

“New Orleans is a canary in the coal mine for what may happen not only in New Orleans again, but somewhere else like Sacramento or Dallas,” Shearer said.

Contact the Arts Editor at arts@dailytarheel.com.