WRITER-DIRECTOR

Brent Joseph is an award-winning writer & director. His most recent film, Beirut on the Bayou, tells the story of his Lebanese family who worked as peddlers in South Louisiana’s Cajun communities during the early 20th century. In Holdout and A Loud Color, Brent created two unique portraits of his hometown of New Orleans as residents grappled with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

His fiction work includes, Bullfrogs, a transgressive re-telling of the damsel-in-distress story, filmed on 16mm black & white in the Louisiana swamp. Mirza the Miraculous, a sci-fi film shot in the desert mountains of West Texas, incorporates kaleidoscopic lo-fi-visuals and an analog electronic score by Quintron. Brent's films have screened at numerous festivals, museums and universities from Los Angeles to Paris including: AFI, Full Frame, Rooftop Films, NewFest, Slamdance and the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University.

DOCUMENTARIES

BEIRUT ON THE BAYOU 

Documentary

Producer, Director

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Lebanese author, Raif Shwayri, travels to Louisiana to trace the life of his grandfather who worked as a peddler serving the Cajuns on Bayou Lafourche in the early 20th century.

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Based on the book of the same title by Raif Shwayri

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Original Arabic music by Brian Prunka

HOLDOUT

Writer, Director

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Set against the stark and surreal landscape of a desolate New Orleans, Holdout is a portrait of a man who refused to leave his home before or after Hurricane Katrina in order to care for his eighteen pets.

Footage was used in Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke and Court 13's Here and Now series for Time Magazine.

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Included in: The Scream: Slamdance Short Film Compilation & NewFest's 20th Anniversary Shorts

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Winner: Best Short Documentary, Arizona Film Festival

A LOUD COLOR

Writer, Director

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While sorting through the debris of the African American community center he opened one month before it was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, 72-year-old Louis Harding talks about history and heroes and why he can't give up on his lifelong dream.

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Songs by Champion Jack Dupree

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Produced by NOVAC

Distributed by Media That Matters

FICTION & EXPERIMENTAL

CREATURES OF THE INTERSTATE

Audio Non-Fiction

Writer, Producer

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An anecdote about meeting a retired Texas oil man drinking and gambling his way home to Houston. This true story takes place in the wake of the 2016 presidential election and paints a picture of an anxious gridlocked country as seen from the bumpy roads and polluted air of West Louisiana.

DANNY'S SONG

Mash-up

Director, Editor

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A VHS mash-up of Stanley Kubrick's film of Stephen King's book The Shining cut to Sonic Youth's cover of the Carpenters' version of the Leon Russell–Bonnie Bramlett song “Superstar.”