Big Easy to Big Empty: The Untold Story of the Drowning of New Orleans (2007)
Disinformation Company

Description

Here is the real story of Hurricane Katrina you won't get on CNN. You'll follow investigative reporter Palast ("a cross between Sam Spade and Sherlock Holmes" - Jim Hightower) as he travels to New Orleans to investigate what has happened since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. On his visit, Palast discovers the population of New Orleans is minuscule, the reconstruction sparse, suicide rates climbing, and that many citizens have not, nor do they even know how to return to the city that care forgot.

Tags

2000s, Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, USA

Collected reviews and ratings

8.0 Amazon user reviews

`Big Easy to Big Empty', although too short in my opinion, is a thought provoking and disquieting documentary for the most part. Even though there isn't any debate or counter-point shown from the government's side, you wonder if it is really needed knowing their lackluster efforts in helping people after this disaster occurred.
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7.5 digitallyobsessed.com | Rich Rosell

The main feature runs less than 30 minutes, which doesn't seem nearly long enough to even scratch the surface on the volatile issues Greg Palast wants voiced. I get his message, but the presentation here seems a little scattershot to effectively tie it all together, something that some of the supplemental material actually does a better job at.
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4.0 PopMatters.com | Boyd Williamson

Big Easy to Big Empty is an unfocused and disjointed patchwork of interviews conducted with New Orleanins nearly one-year after the storm. Palast’s buried thesis is that Katrina’s victims are being kept from retuning, thus enabling the emergence of a “new New Orleans – stripped down, downsized, not too black, just right for tourists.
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