PBS Plus Presentation
The Faubourg Tremé: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans
Nestled at the edge of New Orleans’ fabled French Quarter, Faubourg Tremé is one of America’s oldest African American neighborhoods.
Free for All: The Public Library
Free For All: The Public Library tells the story of the U.S. public library system—a simple idea that shaped a nation and the quiet revolutionaries who made it happen.
- Series
- Independent Lens
- Premiere Date
- April 29, 2025
- Length
- 90 minutes
Producer/ Director/ Editor
Dawn Logsdon
Dawn Logsdon produced, directed, and edited Faubourg Tremé: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans, and co-directed Big Joy: The Adventures of James Broughton. Her editing credits include Jacques Pepin: The Art of Craft, The Weather Underground, Paragraph 175, The Castro, The Vanishing Line, and Have You Heard From Johannesburg among others.
- Other ITVS Films
- The Faubourg Tremé: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans
Producer/ Co-Director
Lucie Faulknor
Lucie Faulknor is an arts management and documentary film professional. Founder at Serendipity Films, LLC, she produced the award-winning documentary Faubourg Tremé: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans. Lucie has worked with SFJAZZ, City Arts & Lectures, Dublin Fringe Festival, and more. She holds a Master of Nonprofit Administration.
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The Film
The public library is one of America’s most valued yet endangered institutions, founded on a visionary principle—to create a place where anyone can enter and encounter a universe of ideas, free of charge. Free For All: The Public Library chronicles the evolution of the nation’s public libraries, tracing the battles over who can enter, what belongs there, and who makes these decisions, while exploring how public commons are defined and defended.
Director Dawn Logsdon travels the United States, discovering historic and modern-day figures, especially women, who contributed to the library’s integral position within democracy. Ernestine Rose was one of the early pioneers in providing books in languages other than English to her immigrant Manhattan neighborhood, and she hired the New York Public Library’s first African American librarians, including Regina Andrews who helped transform an uptown branch of the library into an intellectual and artistic hub of the Harlem Renaissance. In a rural Wisconsin town, librarian Elizabeth Timmons knows all of her patrons by name and literary preferences. Tameka Roby is a library outreach worker who drives the East Baton Rouge bookmobile, providing books and various other services to kids, families, and seniors.
Free For All: The Public Library charts the institution’s trajectory, from the original “Free Library Movement” that began in the late 19th century to current struggles in a digital age amidst budget cuts, closures, and polarizing book bans. Following the stories of public library visitors and staff striving to implement innovative policies, the film celebrates a civic institution where everything is free and the doors are open to all.
