Experience Louisiana Festival shaping up with eclectic touches

The Experience Louisiana Festival is a little over five weeks away and is “growing and growing and becoming a more and more neat project,” Dwight Jodon, one of the lead festival organizers said.
“I think right now it is just a big cultural gumbo,” Jodon said the upcoming festival.
Festival events are centered around the Cajun and Creole culture, but there are some eclectic on tap at the festival scheduled Oct. 17 and 18 at Louisiana State University Eunice campus.
For instance, the LSUE softball team will play LSU Alexandria and UL Lafayette teams. The LSUE baseball team will play LSU Alexandia. Both games are Saturday.
A car show is planned.
A delegation from Caraquet, New Brunswick, Canada, is scheduled to attend the festival. Caraquet is a twin city of Eunice.
The National Park Service announced a $23,000 donation to the festival on Sept. 2.
“Their involvement is just out of the roof. It just really is. To be able to put that kind of attention again back in Eunice,” Jodon said of the Park Service announcement.
“The thing that is remarkable, that shocks people as we move around, is a town as small as Eunice is pulling this off,” Jodon said.
One factor that will keep the festival going year after year is what’s going to happen to hometown folks and visitors to the festival.
“Eunice has always been very well known for hospitality,” Jodon said. “I think that when the old Folklife Festival thrived people arrived and there was a genuine welcoming kind of attitude from the whole area. We are trying to be very intentional with the training of our volunteers.”
Jodon calls it “outrageous hospitality.”
A volunteer training session is scheduled Oct. 3, he said. People who want to volunteer should contact Candace Reeves at 337-457-7389, he said
Pat Mire, a Eunice native and renown filmmaker, has arranged for Robert Muggee, an internationl filmmaker, to debut the film “Rosie’s in the House Tonight” at 11:30 a.m. Oct. 17 in the West Auditorium of the LSUE Community Education Building.
Film buffs could spend much, if not all, of their time at the festival watching and discussing films.
Besides the film on famed zydeco musician Rosie Ledet, the other films and film events on Saturday include:
12:25 to 12:40 p.m. Q & A with director Robert Muggee and producer Diana Zelman.
12:45 to 1:56 p.m. “The Kingdom of Zydeco” by Robert Mugge (1994) 71 min.
2 to 2:30 p.m. Panel discussion — “Documentary Filmmaking” with Mugge and Mire.
2:45 to 4:40 p.m. “New Orleans Music in Exile” by Robert Mugge (2006) 113 min.
4:40 to 5 p.m. Q & A with Mugge and producer Diana Zelman and closing remarks.
On Sunday, film events include:
11 a.m. “No One Ever Went Hungry by Kevin McCaffrey, followed by Q&A with Filmmaker, 58 min. “No One Ever Went Hungry” was awarded the 2012 Louisiana Humanities Documentary of the Year.
12:45 p.m. “Good for What Ails You” by Glen Pitre, traiteur healing, 57 min.
2 p.m. “I Always Do My Collars First” by Conni Castille, 22 min.
2:45 p.m. Screening of “Coton Jaune” by Sharon Gordon Donnan and Suzanne Chaillot Breaux. Folk art with brown cotton, followed by Q&A with filmmakers, 38 min.
“This is a really big piece for us,” Jodon said the film portion of the festival.
At its core, the Experience Louisiana Festival is a fundraiser for the LSUE Founation Scholarship Fund, the Eunice Chamber of Commerce and the Eunice Rotary Club, which is the primary donor to the Eunice Community Health Clinic.
Eunice Community Health Clinic offers free health care to working uninsured and others.
Contact Harlan Kirgan at harlan.kirgan@eunicetoday.com.