Monday Night Double Feature

Screening & Talkback of All Saints and Searching for Sequoyah


Monday Night Double Feature – Page 1 by Stephanie Rountree, Ph.D.

Monday, June 27, 2022 | Hyatt Avalon I and Whova

SSSL 2022’s Monday Night Event will feature back-to-back screenings of two films followed by a Q&A session with filmmakers.

  • 7:30 – 8:00pm: Screening of All Saints: La Toussaint in Lacombe, Louisiana
  • 8:00 – 9:00pm: Screening of Searching for Sequoyah
  • 9:00 – 9:30pm: Talkback with
    • All Saints: Keith Cartwright, Dolores Flores-Silva, Jillian Smith, and Ruby DuCré-Gethers 
    • Searching for Sequoyah: LeAnne Howe

Monday Night: Film 1 – All Saints by Stephanie Rountree, Ph.D.

All Saints: La Toussaint in Lacombe, Louisiana

Hyatt Avalon I and Whova at 7:30pm

All Saints: La Toussaint in Lacombe, Louisiana, is narrated by residents and descendants of Lacombe (in St. Tammany Parish) as they commemorate All Saints Day by cleaning and lighting the graves in Williams and Ducre cemeteries. The families’ steady annual assertion—that the lives and resting places of their departed loved ones matter—presents an intergenerational act of self-love and community that this film’s narrators insist on maintaining. Against pressures of catastrophic storm, land dispossession, economic hard times, racism, and high-velocity consumerism, Lacombe families valorize life through their care in honoring lives gone before them. This blessing of the graves on November 1st is a rite shared across the Gulf, well known as Todos Santos or the Days of the Dead in Mexico. All Saints illuminates this practice in a community of Afro-Creole, French, and Choctaw roots along Bayou Lacombe, as we collaborate with residents whose words and actions share something of real value.

  • Talkback Speakers: Filmmakers Keith Cartwright, Dolores Flores-Silva, and Jillian Smith, along with Lacombe resident Ruby DuCré-Gethers 

Monday Night: Film 2 – Searching for Sequoyah by Stephanie Rountree, Ph.D.

Searching for Sequoyah

Hyatt Avalon I and Whova at 8:00pm

“Searching for Sequoyah” chronicles the life and accomplishments of the legendary 19th century Cherokee visionary, Sequoyah (George Guess), through the oral stories of five modern day Sequoyah descendants. While much is known about Sequoyah’s Cherokee writing system or syllabary, very little is known about the man himself. How did this illiterate Cherokee invent a writing system that transformed the future of his people? From Tuskegee, Tennessee to Zaragoza, Mexico, “Searching for Sequoyah” takes viewers on a journey retracing his final quest to reunite his fellow Cherokees in Mexico, the mystery surrounding his death, and the legacy he left behind.

  • Talkback Speaker: Producer and Writer LeAnne Howe (Choctaw Nation)