News release Public Information Office   SLU 10880   Hammond, LA 70402   phone: 985-549-2341   fax: 985-549-2061 publicinfo@selu.edu     www.selu.edu/news Contact: Christina Chapple Date: 11/13/02 Click on image for publication quality photo  FLORIDA PARISHES DOCUMENTARY – Samuel C. Hyde Jr., director of Southeastern Louisiana University’s Center for Southeast Louisiana Studies, center; assistant director Charles Elliott, left, and television producer L.E. Wallace look over some of the maps and documents that were used in the documentary “Louisiana’s Florida Parishes: Securing the Good Life from a Troubled Land,” which will air on Louisiana Public Broadcasting at 4 p.m., Sunday, November 24. SOUTHEASTERN DOCUMENTARY TO AIR ON LPB       HAMMOND -- The turbulent and frequently neglected  history of Louisiana’s Florida Parishes is the subject of a new documentary, “Louisiana’s Florida Parishes: Securing the Good Life from a Troubled Land,” that will air at 4 p.m., Sunday, November 24 on Louisiana Public Broadcasting stations.       The 30-minute documentary produced by Southeastern Louisiana University’s Center for Southeastern Louisiana Studies, was co-written and directed by center Director Samuel C. Hyde Jr.,  and Assistant Director Charles Elliott. It was filmed by L.E. Wallace Productions and mixed by Kirk Lee at Vivid Video Studies.       Hyde, who holds Southeastern’s Ford Chair in Region Studies, said the film offers a spirited narrative, period music, maps and illustrations, scholarly interviews and live-action recreations to trace the Florida Parishes’ distinctive development from the exploration of Bayou Manchac by the French in 1699, to the area’s current position as one of the fastest-growing region of the state.        “The film discloses historical events as perilous as they are fascinating,” he said.        Hyde said that while the Florida Parishes is home “to arguably the most distinctive and turbulent course of development anywhere in the Gulf South,” the region “has been curiously overlooked in the annals of popular history.”       “Possessing strategic geography and abundant natural resources, southeast Louisiana attracted every major colonial power penetrating the North American wilderness,” Hyde said. “The only part of the state not included in the original Louisiana Purchase, the Florida Parishes evolved into a place whose people shaped their own destiny through an armed insurrection overthrowing the existing government and establishing the original ‘Lone Star Republic.’        “Successive occupations by European and American forces created shifting loyalties that contributed to a regional culture of violence that produced some of the fiercest blood feuds in American history,” Hyde said.       “Louisiana’s Florida Parishes: Securing the Good Life from a Troubled Land” will also be aired on LPB’s Instructional Television and made available to teachers, librarians, tourist development agencies and the general public.        For more information on the film and its programming, contact Louisiana Public Broadcasting (225) 767-4453 or the Center for Southeast Louisiana Studies (985) 549-2151. Return to News Releases