Dear Cinephiles,

“Memory is a selection of images, some elusive, others printed indelibly on the brain,” the narrator of “Eve’s Bayou” tells the viewer at the beginning of this exemplary film. Of course, she is speaking about the story that is about to unfold – yet she could also be speaking about cinema as well, and its elusive and immense spell it has on us. Written and directed by Kasi Lemmons – “Eve’s Bayou” was deservedly the most successful independent film of 1997 – and to this day, remains one of the most accomplished first films.

“The summer I killed my father, I was 10 years old,” continues the narration – and it sets up the film as a culling of a young girl’s memories – as the adult – as well as us the viewers – try to figure out what truly happened that fateful summer of 1962. So from the get-go we know we have a fallible narrator – and that holds a sense of tension with us the viewers – keeping us on our toes – wondering if what we’re seeing is the way it truly was.

Recalling a Tennessee Williams drama as seen through the prism of an affluent Black family in Louisiana, “Eve’s Bayou” tells the story of precocious Eve, who may have witnessed her father having an affair while she was sleeping in the barn. All of a sudden, the veneer of family bliss that had enveloped her starts chipping away. Her father Louis (a very suave Samuel L. Jackson) – the town’s doctor – might be a philanderer. “To a certain type of woman,” he says, “I am a hero. I need to be a hero.” Her beautiful mom Roz may be aware of it – and what secret might her sister Cisely be keeping from her. Eve seeks comfort with her eccentric aunt Mozelle – who is a psychic and only blurs her perspective even further – yet adds a layer of mysticism and fate to the picture.

Lemmons tells her story with confidence – and immerses us in a Creole culture rarely seen on film. She even peppers the script with Creole language. The film has a gauzy texture in its cinematography – as if we were watching slightly old photographs. As she did in last year’s Academy Award nominated “Harriet” she uses flashes of fever like sequences in black and white that articulate Eve’s remembrances or her aunt’s premonitions. The women are particularly well drawn out. Roz – played by the magnificent Lynn Whitfield – displays her long suffering innerworld in her physicality and glances. Debbi Morgan tears through aunt Mozelle – who allows her powers to get the best of her.

“Eve’s Bayou”is great cinema. The fact that it was written and directed by a Black filmmaker who happens to be a woman is even more cause for celebration.

Eve: “The town we lived in was named after a slave. It was said that when General John Paul Batiste was stricken with cholera, his life was saved by the powerful medicine of an African slave woman called Eve. In return for his life, he freed her, and gave her this piece of land by the Bayou. Perhaps in gratitude, she bore him sixteen children. We are the descendants of Eve and John Paul Batiste. I was named for her.”

Love,
Roger

Eve’s Bayou
Available to stream on HBO Now, HBO GO and HBOMax. Available to rent on Amazon Prime, YouTube, Vudu, iTunes, Microsoft, Redbox and Google Play.

Screenplay by Kasi Lemmons
Directed by Kasi Lemmons
Starring Samuel L. Jackson, Lynn Whitfield, Debbi Morgan, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Branford Marsalis, Lisa Nicole Carson, Meagan Good, Jurnee Smollett, and Diahann Carrol.
109 minutes

Kasi Lemmons on Writing “Eve’s Bayou”
In an interview with Blackfilm.com, writer and director, Kasi Lemmons discusses how her film, “Eve’s Bayou” went from the page to the big screen. “I was always interested in writing. I had gone to film school. I definitely had a pull in writing and directing. I had been writing and acting since I was a kid. So I went to film school and I started writing and writing with other people. “Eve’s Bayou” was the first thing I wrote by myself and it was as simple in that I took the time, I wrote the script, I wrote a few drafts until I thought it was good. I showed it to (husband) Vondie (Curtis-Hall) and he said that I really had to show it to someone else. So I showed it to my acting agent and he read it and he went down the hall to the theatrical department and literary department and that person is still my agent, Frank Wuliger. Frank just fell in love with it. Then it was a process of trying to find a director for it because I didn’t have the idea that I was going to direct it. (www.blackfilm.com)

The Making of “Eve’s Bayou”
“One of the people whose interest was piqued by Lemmons’s script was Caldecot Chubb, who had produced Charles Burnett’s “To Sleep With Anger.” “I was trying to find a writer at the time to adapt the Barbara Kingsolver novel “Pigs in Heaven,”‘ he recalls. “And someone gave me “Eve’s Bayou” as a writing sample for that assignment. Two pages in, I thought, This is extraordinary material.’ ” Chubb thought so much of the script that he decided to try to produce it. Lemmons and Chubb agreed on a handshake deal whereby she retained all rights to the material (unusual in itself), and they began to send the script around to the studios in 1993. The quest for backing proved fruitless, as did, finally, the search for a director. Then, one morning, Lemmons awoke with an epiphany: “I thought, If we’re going to look at first-time directors, why couldn’t I do it?’ ”

Lemmons was not a total neophyte. She had studied filmmaking and, in 1994, did a trial run by shooting a short film, “Dr. Hugo,” a vignette taken from “Eve’s Bayou.” (“Dr. Hugo” has since played at a number of film festivals.) The fact that she had retained control over “Eve’s Bayou” as a writer meant that she could prevail now about wanting to direct it. Meanwhile, several actors had expressed interest in the project, including Danny Glover and Samuel L. Jackson. In the wake of his “Pulp Fiction” celebrity, Jackson signed on to “Eve’s Bayou” both as an actor and as one of its producers. “Louis Batiste was definitely someone I hadn’t seen before,” he says, “a family man with interesting conflicts and a romantic and glamorous life. I don’t get to play those kinds of guys.” Nonetheless, the film was a challenge for Hollywood financiers, for reasons that Chubb lists succinctly: “Number 1: an entirely black cast. Number 2: a story about women. Number 3: from a child’s point of view, but not a child’s movie. Number 4: complex subject matter. Number 5: a first-time director.” He pauses, then laughs. “Number 6: and the director’s pregnant.”

But in 1996 the independent company Trimark Pictures agreed to finance the project. The filming took place last fall near Madisonville, La. “We were trying to shoot an epic drama for $4 million,” Lemmons recalls. She contended with certain preconceptions on the set about what a woman director is capable of. “Even the people who loved me and supported me didn’t think I could shoot a gunfight by a train,” she says. “It was up to me to show them that it would be okay, even if we didn’t have a lot of time or money.” On top of it all, Lemmons had a new baby to care for. “I got pregnant, and “Eve’s Bayou” got green-lighted,” she says, laughing. “What was I going to do? Say no? I wanted to show that a woman could have a baby and direct a movie at the same time.” (The Washington Post)

The Cast of “Eve’s Bayou” Reflects on the Impact of the Film
“Emmy Award-winning actress Whitfield, a Louisiana native, felt deeply connected to her character Roz Batiste. Whitfield told ESSENCE, “You could see more into her soul through her eyes and what she didn’t say than what she said.” “I wanted to be a part of honoring this Creole family that you don’t normally get to see and it was a very interesting role. And to this day, I still haven’t seen anything that resembles it in terms of its beauty of cinema, it’s complex story. So rich, so magical, so tragic. I think that Kasi knew the impact it would have. I don’t think I knew at the time.”

When it came to search for a child actor to carry the film as the precocious middle child Eve Batiste, days before shooting, Lemmons knew she found her in then 10-year-old actress Jurnee Smollett. Known for her TV roles on “Full House” and “On Our Own,” Smollett-Bell, now 31, credits her experience on set to falling in love with the art of acting. Alongside Morgan (“All My Children”), her performance as Eve wowed audiences for her level of maturity as a child actor.

“I don’t know if I would be doing what I do without “Eve’s Bayou” and I don’t know if I would have the career that I have without working on “Eve’s Bayou.” The love for what I do, I found it in that project,” Smollett-Bell said. “I wouldn’t be able to tackle a character like Rosalee on “Underground” without having tackled the many characters I’ve played before.” (https://www.essence.com)

About Writer and Director Kasi Lemmons
“Kasi Lemmons is an award-winning director, writer, actress and professor who has been a staple in Hollywood for nearly three decades. Her acclaimed 1997 feature directorial debut, “Eve’s Bayou,” was recently inducted into the National Film Registry, and is considered among the first to showcase the beauty of African American Southern culture. The film received the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature, and the National Board of Review bestowed her with a special first-time director award. “Eve’s Bayou” marked Samuel L. Jackson’s debut as a film producer and helped launch the careers of actresses Megan Good and Jurnee Smollett. Her fifth feature film “Harriet,” is a deeply resonant and powerful drama based on the life of American icon Harriet Tubman. Starring Cynthia Enviro in the titular role, “Harriet” will be released by Focus Features. As an actress, Lemmons appeared in such notable films as Jonathan Demme’s “Silence of the Lambs,” John Woo’s “Hard Target,” and Spike Lee’s “School Daze.” Lemmons has worked extensively as a mentor and educator, and currently serves as an Associate Arts Professor in the Graduate Film Department at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Along with Academy-Award nominated composer Terrence Blanchard, Lemmons recently added librettist to her formidable body of work, creating the stage adaptation of Charles Blow’s New York Times bestselling memoir “Fire Shut up in My Bones,” for the Opera Theater of Saint Louis. Lemmons resides in Harlem with her husband, Vondie Curtis-Hall and their children.” (Focus Features)