HURRICANE KATRINA DOCUMENTARY BLOWS INTO NY THEATRES

Two years after Katrina, as the struggle to collect promised aid, return home, rebuild and recover looms perilously close to failure, a story being told by 600 New Orleans evacuees
in DESERT BAYOU may not have had a voice without director Alex LeMay. The film opens October 5, 2007 in New York at the Village East, followed by a national platform release.

Featuring recording artist Master P, whose parents were among the displaced and Utah-transferred evacuees, DESERT BAYOU centers on the experiences of two families who were airlifted out of the mayhem of a devastated New Orleans and into one of the whitest states in the union. This group of evacuees found themselves first flooded out of the only homes they knew, but literally sequestered on planes, flown into a desert, moved onto an abandoned military base 45 minutes outside of Salt Lake City, subjected to three criminal background checks and forced to maneuver in a chess game ruled by members of a predominantly white, racially ignorant and nearly exclusively Mormon enclave.

"DESERT BAYOU gives voice to those victims who suffered the aftermath of a tragedy that evolved on a daily basis," says LeMay (THE BULLS OF SUBURBIA). "In the midst of this process, there are chronicles of plenty of good deeds, good people and community; religious and social figures whose good will eventually prevails."

Faced with a continued bureaucratic indifference that began following the disaster, the personal stories that emerge from the evacuees add a very human element to a story that was unfathomable by most of the nation and now nearly incomprehensible by those who hear their stories, review news clips of both the Utah Governor, Mayor of Salt Lake City and, comically, a few of the less enlightened citizens of Salt Lake City. The victims' conflicts and personal growth are portrayed all the way from fear and isolation to discovery and solution.

DESERT BAYOU was an official selection of the FULL FRAME Film Festival's Southern Sidebar in 2005. The film will open October 5 in New York and New Orleans, followed by Chicago (October 12), Los Angeles, Houston (October 19) and Salt Lake City, Washington DC, Boston, Philadelphia and Atlanta.

For more information visit: www.desertbayoumovie.com