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July 12, 2012

Quvenzhane Wallis and Dwight Henry play father and daugher in Beasts of the Southern Wild.
Quvenzhane Wallis and Dwight Henry play father and daughter in
Beasts of the Southern Wild
.

Beasts of the Southern Wild Opens Nationwide on Friday

Beasts of the Southern Wild, a controversial independent film of magical realism, depicting an epochal hurricane and flood in post-Katrina Louisiana delta country, opens nationwide  in selected theaters on Friday after premiering  June 27 in New York and Los Angeles. 

The film, based on Juicy and Delicious, a play by Lucy Alibar, who collaborated on the film’s script, was written and directed by Benh Zeitlin and made on a shoestring budget by Court 13, a New Orleans-based production collective. The film, Zeitlin’s first, won awards at both the Cannes and Sundance film festivals this year.

The film is narrated by six-year-old Hushpuppy, a little girl, played by Quvenzhane Wallis, a miniature actress with stupendous talent who was chosen from a pool of 4,000 children interviewed for the protagonist’s role.  Hushpuppy, whose mother is gone, lives with her father, Wink, an alcoholic with a heart ailment, in the fictional bayou town of Bathtub. Wink is played by Dwight Henry, who in real life is a baker in New Orleans.  Henry was recruited along with other locals to perform in the film.

To cope with her difficult circumstances, Hushpuppy imagines her world being populated by giant pre-historic creatures, called aurochs. These fantasy creatures figure largely in the film and are partially responsible for the threads of surrealism in the production.  When a hurricane hits Bathtub and its surround, the film depicts powerfully a vulnerable community’s struggle to survive against overwhelming odds and is in the end a celebration of human resilience.

Zeitlin, 29, a native of Queens, N.Y., lived for months in delta country before, during and after the making of Beasts of the Southern Wild. While his talent as a screenwriter and film director have been lauded and the prizes awarded him are a testament to the respect he has captured from the film industry, Zeitlin has also been criticized for producing a film about an area of the country and a culture he is not a part of and knows too little about.  He has also been criticized for portraying African-Americans as damaged and inadequate.

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