“It was neither the wind nor rain that brought
hell to us that summer.
It was an old, white and wayward wave
that ravished us.”
- ROUX LEE
The Preservation of Roux Lee, is a visually striking, thought-provoking and heartfelt film that forces us to reflect on the critical decisions we make and how those choices affect what matters most.
THE STORY
Directed by Jennifer Haskin-O’Reggio (recipient of two Director’s Guild of America awards and the Student Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Award), The Preservation of Roux Lee is a modern Southern folktale set in New Orleans which follows a once successful Black man after a chaotic event destroys all that is precious to him. As he sets out to recover all he has lost, he finds himself on a mysterious journey that soon becomes the key to his survival.
Note: *Some Images Contain Graphic Content
The Preservation of Roux Lee is set in New Orleans, Louisiana during the first 10 years of recovery after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2005, and left 80% of the city underwater.
On August 29, 2005 the world watched as the United States slipped into Third World status. Local, state, and federal government agencies were slow or absent in their response to evacuate and rescue citizens as Hurricane Katrina, the costliest natural disaster to hit the U.S. (damages were in excess of $100 Billion), ravaged 90,000 square miles along the Gulf Coast.
In the end, Katrina destroyed more than 204,000 homes in New Orleans alone, and scattered more than 1.7 million citizens to different states throughout the US. At least 1836 people lost their lives during the storm and many in the aftermath struggled with storm-related medical illness, suicide, and post-traumatic stress disorder as they attempted to rebuild their homes, businesses, lives, and families. Those who survived and decided to return to the city were left without homes, forced to live in FEMA trailers for years, in a city lacking basic services and utilities like electricity and mail service. Many years later, the poorest parts of the city still remained heavily damaged and resembled a third world nation.
Hurricane Katrina is more than just the film’s setting, it illuminated the substandard resources many of the city’s most marginalized residents received during and after this unfortunate catastrophe.
THE SETTING:
Post-Hurricane Katrina
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THE TEAM
JENNIFER HASKIN-O’REGGIO
CO-PRODUCER, WRITER/DIRECTOR
A New Orleans native, Jennifer began her directing career in theater but is best known for her film/TV work as a writer/director/producer and cinema educator. Based in Los Angeles, she is an alum of USC’s Graduate School of Cinema and Television. Her directing work THE MIRROR LIED and BLUES for RED has garnered two Director’s Guild of America student awards, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Student Academy Award, the Kodak Emerging Filmmaker Award, the Academy Gold Finalist among others and has screened films in over 20 festivals. She has also directed, written and produced for Sesame Street and has created video and photography content for Getty Images, Pond5, Interscope Records and Adobe Images.
KAREN JENNINGS
CO-PRODUCER
Karen was born in London England. She graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Baccalaureate degree in computer science and mathematics. She also pursued a Master’s degree in Computer Science at The Ohio State University. During her employment at AT&T and Lucent, Karen became known for her ability to optimize project resources to achieve significant cost savings. In addition, she successfully built and managed cross-functional, high performance teams in the USA, China, India, Poland, Japan, the UK, and France. In recognition of her achievements, Lucent appointed Karen to the position of Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff (DMTS). She is now applying her three decades of management expertise at Lucent, to her work as a film producer.
RACHEL PEARL
LEAD EDITOR/ASSISTANT PRODUCER
Award winning editor Rachel Ann Pearl earned a BS in Neurobiology from Cornell University before she came to her senses and moved to Boston, MA to attend Berklee College of Music. She forgot to leave. Pearl spent the next 15 years performing jazz, folk, and rock music and making short films before earning her MFA at the UCLA School of Film and Television. Rachel’s Pearl’s editing work spans narrative, multimedia and documentary genres. Her feature work includes the documentaries “Fema City” and “Change is Gonna Come”, a film about the Peace movement. Her most recent documentary, “Where She Lies” is available on Netflix. Her narrative features include “Courting Chaos” a romantic comedy with clowns and “Muslimah’s Guide to Marriage” an award winning Muslim American romantic comedy.
ANNMARIE MORAIS
ASSOCIATE PRODUCER/ SCRIPT CONSULTANT
A Jamaican-Canadian screenwriter, AnnMarie is best known for writing the films Killjoys, How She Move and Haven and the upcoming TV series The Porter. She earned a BFA from York University in Film and Video in 1995. Morais won funding for two Vision TV Cultural Diversity Drama Competition movies: Hotel Babylon and Da Kink in My Hair, which aired on Vision in 2004 and 2005. Morais was also a writer and story editor on the television series adapted from the play, which aired on Global Television in 2007. Morais was the first Canadian to win the prestigious Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting.
TAWANNA BROWN
CO-WRITER
In addition to being a poet and screenwriter, Tawanna thrives in the non-profit sector as a grant writer and manager. Tawanna is particularly inspired by the cultural wisdom and metaphors embedded within the collective stories of communities.
LAURA PAK HONMA
CO-WRITER
A graduate of USC’s Film School, Laura has worked on various film, television and documentary projects in all aspects of production. A recipient of a Fox Fellowship Screenwriting Award, she has also written several screenplays of various genres commissioned by an independent production company. She is currently working on feature-length and series scripts, as well as finishing a Young Adult Novel. She hopes to continue to write and produce scripts that entertain but also highlight underrepresented voices.
ALLIE SCHULTZ
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Allie is a cinematographer and Texas native based in Los Angeles. After working in the camera department on the Walking Dead, she attended the American Film Institute Conservatory and received a MFA in their globally recognized cinematography program. Her films have gone on to screen at major festivals, including SXSW, Tribeca, and Energa CAMERIMAGE. She is a 2022 International Cinematographers Guild Emerging Cinematographer Award recipient, which is the only award show in the industry that specifically celebrates the work of up-and-coming cinematographers.
MIKAYLA OREGGIO
ASSOCIATE PRODUCER
Mikayla received her BS in Environmental Economics and Policy from UC Berkeley. She brings this background and business expertise to the world of production and producing various media projects. Since her time at Berkeley, Mikayla has expanded her passion for media, communications, empowering communities through activism and democratized technology through her project management, analyst, and marketing work at ParsonsTKO with clients such as The Center for American Progress, Urban Institute and the Movement for Black Lives. Mikayla’s passion for nonprofits expands outside her work at PTKO through her co-founding of Activism Always, a social enterprise startup developing ethical social media listening technology for the mission-driven sector.
CARMELLA JENKINS
CASTING DIRECTOR
A graduate of Chapman University where she studied Theater and Performing Arts, Carmella has since moved into the film realm where she has assisted on numerous film productions from documentaries to fiction film and online media of all sorts. When she isn’t busy assisting on productions, she enjoys pursuing her love for acting, dance, and musical theater.
JYVONNE HASKIN
ASSISTANT PRODUCER
Having honed her skills in operations and project management, Jyvonne brings an expert eye to production logistics. From managing all aspects of a project from inception to proposal, production, quality assurance and delivery, or estimating and preparing budgets, schedules, flowcharts and additional documentation for clients, teams and third-party vendors, or creatively solving technical, graphic and scheduling issues, Jyvonne interfaces with clients to efficiently and accurately develop desired product outcomes. She holds a Bachelor of Science from Indiana University – Purdue in New Media Arts and Sciences.