Glen Pitre in the Southern Quote

Glen Pitre was born at Cut Off, Louisiana on the 10^th of November, 1955. He worked his way through Harvard by fishing shrimp during the summer and saving for the next year’s education. His goal, to make films that told the story of his people, the Louisiana Cajun. By the age of twenty-five, Glen had been named “Father of the Cajun Film” for his low budget, French-dialect authentic dramas that routinely broke records in cinemas across the bayou. Then, in 1986, with the help of the Sundance Institute, he released what would become an internationally lauded film by the name of Belizaire the Cajun that told the story of 19^th century South Louisiana. Glen Pitre has since worked in a variety of media, and earned a host of grants and awards, not the least of which was a knighthood from France.

This past spring, Pitre joined another award-winning independent filmmaker by the name of Benh Zeitlin, creator of Beasts of the Southern Wild, to host a discussion at Louisiana State Universtiy on their own works as well as the coastal erosion of Louisiana and the communities whose traditional ways of life are threatened by our disappearing wetlands.

In today’s Southern Quote we hear this Harvard-educated filmmaker who left Cajun country, only to return, speak to a way of life that produces strong bonds with both family and land. When asked about the story of Vacherie, La., a small Cajun town on the banks of the Mississippi River that owns the distinction of being the most rooted town in the most rooted state in the country, whose folks tend to stick close to home–and to mama, Glen Pitre said, “It is easy to pick up and move when the culture you know is all McDonald’s. But if you grow up the way I did in Louisiana, you don’t in your travels find anything like it. Some of it is the cuisine, but mostly it is a mind-set.”