Tall tales, oyster-shucking monsters, and some good old-fashioned jokes are all on the menu in Swapping Stories: Folktales from Louisiana. A co-production with LPB, filmmaker Pat Mire ("Dirty Rice") wrote, produced and directed the documentary which was co-produced by Maida Owens, the director of the Louisiana Folklife Program in the Louisiana Division of the Arts. Carl Lindahl, Professor of English at the University of Houston, served as principal scholar on the project.

In culturally diverse Louisiana, the traditional art of storytelling is alive and well as a means of communicating values and culture to family, friends and the community. This special brings together some of the best storytellers in Louisiana including comedians A. J. Smith and Dave Petitjohn, Cajun storyteller Enola Mathews, and the late Bel Abbey and Colonel Ike Hamilton.

Their tales range from a Creole French version of the story of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby to Bertney Langley's myth about how bats got their wings. It also features Loulan and Glen Pitre regaling listeners with the legend of the oyster-shucking monster called Loup Garou who came out of the Gulf every night.

The secret of storytelling is to make the audience feel at home regardless of where they are. So sit down in your easy chair and get ready to listen to a few whoppers when Swapping Stories: Folktales from Louisiana premieres on May 10.

The Filmmakers:

Pat Mire is an award-winning documentary filmmaker. Mire's cultural documentaries have been broadcast nationally on PBS, the Discovery Channel, and TNN's American Skyline and have won the highest awards in the most prestigious national and international competition including the Margaret Mead Film Festival, Worldfest Houston, and the American Anthropological Film Festival's coveted "Award of Excellence." Mire and his films have been the subject of numerous articles and reviews in major magazines, newspapers, and journals. Carl Lindahl, film reviewer for the Journal of American Folklore called Pat Mire "an important artistic force at work in French Louisiana whose camera work and editing are excellent." Lindahl's review compared Mire to legendary documentary filmmaker Les Blank. "The second-generation films reviewed here find Blank responding to a call for a more focused and academically-guided cultural exploration and mark the debut of Pat Mire, a filmmaker dedicated to intensive, holistic presentation of specific aspects of his cultural heritage. Pat Mire relies heavily on his own experience as a Cajun to study specific cultural practices that become platforms for rich and complex explorations of family and community culture. Mire's close-focus technique proves extremely fruitful, revealing as much about the broader structures of Cajun life and values as about the specific practices he highlights."

Recognized for his creative filmmaking skills, Pat Mire was the only Louisiana filmmaker to receive a 1991 regional fellowship from the Southeast Media Fellowship Program that included fourteen states. In December of 1993, the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities honored Mire with a Special Humanities Award for his film work which has made a major contribution to the humanities in Louisiana. He was also the recipient of a 1994 fellowship from the Louisiana Division of the Arts which had not given a fellowship to a filmmaker in six years. In 1995, Mire was called a "Louisiana Success Story" at the Governors Arts Awards. On May 17, 1997, the Acadiana Arts Council honored Mire with the "Distinguished Artist Award," which is given to an artist who's work has achieved national recognition.

Pat Mire has consulted, served as an advisor, researcher, location scout, and production coordinator for several documentaries and feature films shot in Louisiana.

Pat Mire Filmography:

Wildflowers of the Cajun Prairie (1988, 39 min., color). Producer, writer, director. A documentary on the remaining parts of Southwest Louisiana's natural prairie habitat and efforts to restore its original biodiversity.

Anything I Catch...the Handfishing Story (1990, 30 min., color) Producer, writer, director. Cajuns wade in murky bayous and catch fish and turtles with their bare hands in this remarkable study of the relationship between cultural and natural resources. Aired nationally on PBS and the Discovery Channel.

Legends of Louisiana (1991, 60 min., 16mm. color). Consultant and segment director of Sandy Mortimer's travelogue on Louisiana's food, music, culture, historic sites, and visitor attractions. Aired nationally on The Travel Channel.

Dance for a Chicken: The Cajun Mardi Gras (1993, 60 min., 16mm. color). Producer, writer, director for this entertaining inside look at the colorful and exotic rural Cajun Mardi Gras. Aired nationally on PBS.

Sisters of the South (1994) Writer and director for a PBS promotional shoot for the Louisiana segment of the "Sisters of the South" musical tour which features Louisiana artists Balfa Toujours.

Dirty Rice (1997, 85 min., 35mm. color). Producer, writer, director. Mire's first feature film is set against the backdrop of southwest Louisiana's beautiful rice country, where he was born and raised. This contemporary drama is about a man who returns home to reclaim his Cajun heritage while struggling to save the family rice farm.

Swapping Stories: Folktales from Louisiana (1998, 30 min., color) The genres of traditional storytelling in Louisiana are presented in this charming cultural documentary. They include animal tales, magic tales, myths, legends, tall tales, and jokes.

Maida Owens is a cultural anthropologist specializing in Louisiana traditional cultures. As director of the Louisiana Folklife Program within the Division of the Arts since 1988, she works with organizations and researchers to identify traditional artists and determine the most appropriate way to present folk musicians, storytellers, craftsmen, and traditional cooks to the public. She has been involved with folklife surveys in Louisiana's Florida Parishes and the upper Delta in northeast Louisiana to systematically document the region's folk traditions and teach community members to document their own traditions.

After ten years experience with the Louisiana Folklife Festival and various other projects, she has worked with hundreds of folk artists from Louisiana's diverse cultures. Her article entitled "Louisiana's Traditional Cultures" published in the book Swapping Stories: Folktales from Louisiana (1997, University Press of Mississippi), is also available online.

Owens curated the renovation of The Creole State: An Exhibition of Louisiana Folklife (1995) permanently located in the State Capitol, and now online. She edited the publication, Fait a la Main: A Sourcebook of Louisiana Crafts (1988), co-edited Keeping It Alive: Cultural Conservation through Apprenticeship, A Review of the Louisiana Apprenticeship Program (1993), co-edited the publication Swapping Stories: Folktales from Louisiana (1997) and served as co-producer/researcher of its companion video program (1998). For the video documentary, Dance for a Chicken: The Cajun Mardi Gras (1993), she served as assistant producer and researcher.

Carl Lindahl, editor of the World Folktale Library and Professor of English at the University of Houston, served as principal scholar for Swapping Stories. Lindahl has on-camera commentary and voiced opinion before final edit decisions were made. Lindahl is one of the three editors of the book with the same name.