Back to the bayou
Writer-director Kasi Lemmons on how EVE’S BAYOU became a modern classic of Black cinema
Jurnee Smollett as ten-year-old Eve Batiste.
Voodoo is a key component in the tale.
Criterion Collection, Photofest
“THE SUMMER I killed my father, I was ten years old.” That’s how Eve’s Bayou begins, an unseen narrator morbidly reflecting on a turbulent, hot summer, way back when — setting the scene for a rich, atmospheric, Southern Gothic melodrama in 1960s Louisiana, about a young girl (played by future star Jurnee Smollett) who witnesses her father (Samuel L. Jackson) having an affair.
For debut writer-director Kasi Lemmons — at the time an actor best known for playing Clarice Starling’s fellow FBI trainee in The Silence Of The Lambs — it was the film she had long wanted to see herself. Twenty-five years since its release, Eve’s Bayou is now joining the storied ranks of the Criterion Collection, prompting Lemmons to delve into her memories of making the film; like her protagonist, reaching back into the fogginess of the past. Here, she explains why the film still means so much to her.