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what? My name is Richard Old War, and I am considered to be one of the founders of the CBI film. You know, the question is, when somebody asked, What does Louisiana Dairy all about? Well, at the simplest level, it is a story of a film crew

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that went to Louisiana with a core voter registration drive. We were I suppose the phrase would be we were embedded, which is common today, but was not used back in those days. Uh, and we spent what, about 2.5 months there. And this is a record of

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what took place in the town of Plaquemine, Louisiana. During that time, Louisiana Diary was a title which came up, um, during editing, when the question arose is to what is this film all about? And unlike, for example, of film take this hammer, which is almost a

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single theme throughout from my perspective, um, Louisiana Diary was a collection of events, some of them very powerful, but they didn't really add up to a story. There was no success at the end of it. There was marginal progress made. The dreadful thing about it is

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that the week after we left the church that you see in the film was burned to the ground. Prior to that, two days after we left, the state, troopers rode their horses into the church and broke up. But contrary. I went back there about 10 years

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after the event, and there's nothing but, you know, some charred foundation blocks. The church has never been rebuilt, and the fact that the troopers rode into the church and that the church was burned never made the evening news. We were not living in Plaquemine. We tried.

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We rented a house in the heat, no air conditioning, the bugs and all of the other problems. We found that we couldn't keep our gear clean, the film cool enough. And so we had to go back to a motel in Baton Rouge, which was about 20

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miles north and across the river from plaque alone. It's really a record of what we encountered during that time. It's not a look from the inside. It's not a look from the black perspective. It's a look from the perspective of well, essentially, from my perspective of

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what we were filming. Yeah, I mean, as you can imagine going into a small Southern town. At that time, we were not received with open arms because a za matter of fact, we were regarded as interlopers, uh, as people who are causing trouble. And the only

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thing that protected us was our press badge on the the fact that, uh, we were in a position of, uh, permitting a wider world to find out what was going on there. So there was a kind of a restraint in that obviously, so far is the

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black population is concerned We received with open arms in terms of understandably, the white population didn't have the same view, Um, in the sentence. One of the interesting things in in in in this conversation is that I'm beginning to realize that there's certain things that I

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take for granted, which you're not Azaz, um, you know, on the agenda or the perceptual screen of people today, But it also affect me in a different way. And when I realized that the problems persist and that if we talk long enough, people today come up

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with the same kinds of moral questions, the same kinds of civil rights questions, uh, the same kinds of constitutional questions the same kinds of economic questions, the same kinds of racist questions which were prevalent in the 19 sixties. That's an interesting, you know. Perhaps that's a

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subject for another film that somebody else can make. In this case, the police ordered the crowd to disperse. They didn't and they began to fire tear gas canisters. Um, and there's some interesting footage of that moment of police violence. Um, the Phil Green, the principal cameramen

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had to stop for early because he simply couldn't see because here again, I grabbed a bollocks camera, which I, it was forgot, had over 100 ft magazine in which last for three minutes. And I was in the midst of all this film and I thought I

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had great shots. I discovered, Of course, I had no film in the camera, but that's another bad. That's just the hazards of filmmaking. Um, but getting away that evening, we we finally got in the car, but the police had carefully put tear gas canisters underneath the

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car, and so the minute we had the air conditioning working, the intensity of the tear gas inside the car was worse than outside. So it was a matter of driving a short distance and, you know, trying to be able to see another 50 ft on It

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was it was a pretty night, Mary. She experiences those things. Tend to be the next day. We went back and we discovered that the police were looking for us and we ended up in a black, um, mortuary for protection where we were directed by the local

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black population, and they got us out through. I remember writing now where you couldn't be seen in a black hearse, but at the same time, we were listening to police calls, so we knew where the police were, and we were just sort of playing this game.

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The police were here, and we're here sooner or later. You know, we had we just had spent the greater part of the night in the mortuary. And then about three o'clock in the morning, when he made a run for it out of town, once you were

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out of town, the you know, they were not about to run you off the highway. With a couple of exceptions, Core was more conscious about their own image and so on. And then they certainly didn't want any from their perspective. Misinformation to get on. It was

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a matter of my simply convincing, Um, whoever it waas Gordon Carrie, in this case, running more was the local core representative, and now it's one of the films that core shows on an anniversary. I think every year we didn't necessarily have the confidence at the national

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level of core until James Farmer and Floyd McKissick came there and after the marsh, which we covered, and the day or so after when we went to the Donaldson Ville Donaldson Ville was just a little town further south along the Mississippi River from Blackman. And we're

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not filming because we've been The sheriff came out there. The police came out and said, You know, filming. But I walked out with my tape recorder sensibly just to talk to people, you know. But with the tape recorder running and then finally the one officer, I

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realized what I was doing and came up in a somewhat threatening manner and and somewhere that we couldn't. We couldn't integrate what he said, although I did record it, which is, if I didn't want my head based in, I'd better get down we'll be back in

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the car and get out of here. Uh, and that was apparent to Farmer and McKissick who were in the jail. And they apparently made some kind of judgment which struck me as a little law, that that moment, because I was in harm's way. Therefore, I was,

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you know, that was some kind of validation from You're always in harm's way and making films like that not so much as the participants you're filming. You know, people ask the question is to What do you think about, uh, take this hammer in comparison with Louisiana

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Diary? Because one film seems to be more effective or is better responded Thio at present than would be? That would be the Baldwin. From You know, this is an odd question, because it has to do with film form. The take This hammer is more of a

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is a better example of film art. The Louisiana Diarrhea Louisiana Diary is a better example off the difficulties, the struggles and the violence, occasional violence that occurs when you're trying to advance the cause of civil rights specifically by voter registration. Well, we were tracking voter registration.

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The attempts to get black people registered as voters in the South, where it was very difficult and impossible in some instances. And eso that seemed to us to be a legitimate topic. I think we covered it. But we came up against that interesting problem of cinema

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verite was she was. What if things appear to be boring over a period of time? What if it's just hard footwork? What if it's just hard organizing? What if it's just hard going door to door to door where the dramatic scenes, the interrogation training scene or

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the the tear gas scene? Those are the only hi moments of violence? But the minute you say, boy, those were the things that are needed Thio to make a good, interesting film, you've lost your sense of reality of the world. Much of the world is born.

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Much of the world takes day today. Persistence. It takes organization, and above all, it takes patience, interlaced with courage. And you have to have those elements, and I think from my personal perspective. But now you have to understand that I'm relating to the remembrance of those

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experiences. Louisiana Diaries are much more interesting film than than the Baldwin film. The Ballroom film is a better film as film, then Louisiana Diary. Beyond that, I don't know what Thio to say about them, and each film is different. But this morning, with my