The Order of Myths | |
---|---|
Directed by | Margaret Brown |
Written by | Margaret Brown |
Produced by | Margaret Brown Sara Cross Steve Bannatyne [1] |
Cinematography | Michael Simmonds |
Edited by | Michael Taylor Margaret Brown Geoffrey Richman |
Distributed by | The Cinema Guild |
Release dates |
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Running time | 79 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
The Order of Myths is a 2008 documentary film directed by Margaret Brown. It focuses on the Mardi Gras celebrations in Mobile, Alabama, the oldest in the United States. It reveals the separate mystic societies established and maintained by Black and White groups, and acknowledges the complex racial history of a city with a slaveholding past.
While showing the mystic societies' ties to economic, class and racial stratification, the film showed the beginnings of interaction between the Black and White courts. It tells some of the history of Africatown, a community formed north of Mobile in 1860 by Africans from Ghana, transported illegally as slaves to Mobile decades after the end of the slave trade.
The film competed in the Documentary Competition at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. [2] It had a limited release in New York in July 2008, and ran on Independent Lens, a PBS series featuring independent films, in 2009. [3] It was distributed by The Cinema Guild.
The film appeared on several critics' top-ten lists of the best films of 2008. Andrew O'Hehir of Salon named it the 9th-best film of 2008, [4] as did Ella Taylor of LA Weekly (along with Moving Midway ) [4] and Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe . [4] It also won a Peabody Award in 2010. [5]
Mardi Gras is the final day of Carnival ; it thus falls on the day before the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday. Mardi Gras is French for "Fat Tuesday", reflecting the practice of the last night of consuming rich, fatty foods in preparation for the Christian fasting season of Lent, during which the consumption of such foods is avoided.
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Mardi Gras is the annual Carnival celebration in Mobile, Alabama. It is the oldest official Carnival celebration in the United States, started by Frenchman Nicholas Langlois in 1703 when Mobile was the capital of Louisiana. Although today New Orleans and South Louisiana celebrations are much more widely known for all the current traditions such as masked balls, parades, floats and throws were first created there. From Mobile being the first capital of French Louisiana (1702), the festival began as a French Catholic tradition. Mardi Gras has now evolved into a mainstream multi-week celebration across the spectrum of cultures, becoming school holidays for the final Monday and Tuesday, regardless of religious affiliation.
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A mystic society is a Mardi Gras social organization in Mobile, Alabama, that presents parades and/or balls for the enjoyment of its members, guests, and the public. The New Orleans Krewe is patterned after Mobile's Mystics. The societies have been based in class, economic and racial groups. Mobile's parading mystic societies build colorful Carnival floats and create costumes around each year's themes.
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Mardi Gras in the United States is celebrated in a number of cities and regions in the country. Most of these places trace their Mardi Gras celebrations to French, Spanish, and other Catholic colonial influences on the settlements over their history.
The Order of Myths, (OOMs) founded in 1867, is the second oldest mystic society to celebrate Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama, after the Striker's Independent Society. It is the oldest continuously parading mystic society in Mobile. The Order of Myths chose, as its symbolic emblem, Folly chasing Death around a broken column of life. During parades, a person dressed in a jester's suit, as Folly, chases a person dressed in a skeleton suit as Death, around a Greek column on the emblem float. At the conclusion of the traditional OOM parade, Death is defeated, and Folly wins the day.
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