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Hello, everyone.

I'm Karen LeBlanc And I'm Kara St. Cyr Topping our news headlines this week.

Louisiana sees its first congressman ever elected as the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Republican Congressman Mike Johnson, a Shreveport native representing the fourth District of Louisiana, will serve as the 56th speaker of the House.

Republicans unanimously elected Johnson as House speaker on Wednesday, ending weeks of leadership chaos in the House of Representatives.

Also making political headlines this week, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry held his first press conference as Louisiana's governor elect.

He used this time to highlight the process of his transition into the highest office in the state of Louisiana.

For the first time since his gubernatorial election victory, Governor elect and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry held a press conference announcing his transition team.

A group of seven members who will shape the future of Landrieu's tenure in office.

The press conference was held at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where Landry says his new team will meet to prepare his move to the governor's office.

This is a breaking tradition.

In the past, incoming governor elects held their meetings on LSU's campus in Baton Rouge.

When asked why he would be moving, he answered that Lafayette is more accessible to the rest of the state.

The governor elect went on to list the members of his team.

Some of the names will be familiar to Louisiana's electorate.

The list includes former Republican gubernatorial candidates, big time businessmen and lawyers.

Most of the team is comprised of longtime supporters of the Landry campaign, and the list goes as follows.

Ralph Abraham.

Eddie Rispone, Lane Grigsby, Tim Hardy, Shane Guidry, Steve Orlando.

And last but not least, Sharon Landry.

Louisiana's next first lady, Sharon Landry, will also have a more detailed role in the future, as Landry says she'll be needed to keep the men in line before concluding his first presser as the governor elect.

Landry said he plans to start his term with a special session focusing on crime reduction.

He named economics and education as his other priorities.

As we pull the rest of the transition committees together, we'll be working.

We hope to be working with them more and more in a very transparent manner.

Again, let me make sure you understand that the purpose today is to ensure that this transition starts hitting the ground running.

Landry will officially begin his tenure on January 8th.

Inauguration Day.

It was a busy news week across the state of Louisiana as we again made national headlines tragically for a deadly mile long accident on Interstate 55 in Saint John the Baptist Parish.

The latest information we have from Louisiana State Police is that the northbound lane of I-55 bridge remains closed.

The southbound lane is open with the exception of a section of that lane which remains closed.

Here's more.

The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development is inspecting the bridge along Interstate 55 in Saint John the Baptist Parish before it can safely open for motorists Monday morning.

A blinding blanket of fog and smoke from nearby marsh Fires descended on this stretch of I-55, causing havoc for motorists.

It started on the northbound side around milepost 13 and then it kind of extends up to there's a high rise right there and it kind of extends up to into that high rise.

But there was also crashes that occurred on the southbound.

Side as well.

The length of that crash.

Was not nearly as.

Long as.

The northbound side.

Most of the crashes occurred on the northbound side.

But, yes, as to your question, we're still at excess of 150 vehicles trying to get.

A completely accurate.

Count.

But we know that we are greater than 150.

The collisions ignited fires along a portion of the crash scene.

The mile long pileup caused eight confirmed fatalities and sent more than 25 individuals to area hospitals.

I think that sometimes people underestimate the fall and they think that they're going to be able to see in front of them sometimes that that low visibility comes up very quickly and you don't.

Have time to.

Adjust.

However, when we know that we are entering those conditions and we know.

That there's fog, if we reduce our speed just a little bit.

Even if a crash does occur, that reduces the.

Probability of.

Serious injury and fatalities because.

We're lowering the force for lowering the energy, we're lowering that momentum between all of the cars.

But we all have.

To do that collectively.

We all have to care about each other and care about our roadways and care about ourselves and lower those speeds.

Some other safe driving behaviors are the turning our headlights on, not relying on the automatic feature in our vehicles because the vehicle may.

Not detect that there's.

Fog.

The SAG-AFTRA strike has passed its 100th day, the longest strike in the union's history.

On Tuesday, talks resumed between the Actors Union and Hollywood and streaming studios.

The Screen Actors Guild strike started in mid-July with a key point of contention How much should actress make on streaming shows?

Meanwhile, Louisiana's film industry aims to make a comeback to its heydays as Hollywood South with fresh ideas and incentives.

I spent some time with Louisiana filmmakers and stakeholders who say the show must go on, and it is.

Here's more.

The Road Dance is a story about a young woman.

She's grown up on this island, which is a beautiful island in Scotland.

It's a story about young love and following one's dreams.

And it's a set in a time period that was surrounding World War One.

Filmmaker Richie Adams chose his hometown of Baton Rouge to debut his latest feature film, The Road Dance.

The pre-released screening played to a full house at Manship Theater.

What was so advantageous about working in Louisiana?

It doesn't cost as much to film here as it does to film.

There.

Louisiana's film Incentive tax credits allow producers to get reimbursements for up to 40% of their qualifying films, TV shows and digital media projects during the 2023 legislative session.

The Louisiana Film Entertainment Association staged a movie shoot at the Louisiana State Capitol, giving lawmakers a behind the scenes look at movie making and money making for the state's economy.

At the time, Louisiana's film Incentive tax credits were up for renewal and House Bill 562, which lawmakers passed and the governor signed into law extending the program until 2031.

So now here we are back with the fresh sunset, 2031, and really just trying to rebuild our crew base back and get ready for the huge demand that we're about to get when these strikes get sorted out.

Celtic studios in Baton Rouge has set the stage for several blockbuster films during Louisiana's heydays of moviemaking.

I sat down with film industry stakeholders on the Celtic lot to talk about the state of the state's film industry.

Given the current actors strike and the recent renewal of Louisiana's film tax incentives.

I would say in 2005, when I first started coming down here and working as an assistant director from California, which then progressed, you know, as we started getting resources like Panavision, camera house and post houses here, then I would say by 2009, when I came back on Battle of Los Angeles, which was the first major motion picture to shoot here at Celtic Studios, we were we were Hollywood South.

Louisiana's competitiveness in the film industry is closely tied to the incentive program aimed at productions that work with Louisiana residents producing locally written screenplays and using Louisiana post-production facilities.

You have to go pretty far to be as competitive as Georgia, who's, I think, offering 1.2 billion a year in tax incentives for film production.

Whereas Louisiana right now is only offering 150 million a year.

I'm not proposing that we give 1.2 billion a year to the film industry, but what I would propose is to try to be a little more competitive with some of the other states.

Louisiana's Film Incentive Program.

Drew Richey Back home.

After years of working in Los Angeles as a successful motion graphics title designer.

He has an office at Celtic Studios and he filmed additional scenes for the road dance around downtown Baton Rouge.

At the end of any film, there are scenes that you wish you could have captured during principal photography, and one of those scenes was a scene that was meant to depict New York City.

We found that just behind the Bell of Baton Rouge Casino, and I worked with a local team here to to dress that road, take out anything that was modern and face it with some parts of what would have been greens, foliage, trees, some signage that looked like it was in New York.

And then in visual effects, we added the Manhattan Bridge in the distance instead of the Mississippi Bridge.

Recent projects that were shot and or had post-production work done in Louisiana include the movie where the Crawdads Sing.

Jeff Taylor worked as an assistant camera operator on that project.

Actually, he spent his entire production career in Louisiana working on many projects over a 20 plus year span and the extension of the film tax incentives through 2031 goes far enough for.

Do you think it needs to go farther?

I think everyone would say we'd like it to be longer.

It's a good step in the right direction.

Everything helps.

At the time of this interview, SAG-AFTRA is still striking.

How is this affecting you in your ability to survive and thrive?

A lot of my friends, November was the last time they worked.

So we're doing what we can to get by.

I'm driving Uber, so you might see me out there, but I mean, you never know.

I'm going to stick around as long as it takes, you know, because this is this is this is my career.

Celtic Studios has soundstages and post-production capabilities.

It is a lot of moviemaking infrastructure.

So Celtic aims to keep its facilities in full swing by fostering the next generation of film workers.

The movies follow the incentives, there's no doubt about that.

I've been hitting up colleges and high schools here in Baton Rouge and all over the state, trying to let these young people know that they have another path.

It's a trade.

No college degree necessary.

You know, two years, you can be in the trade in a union making upwards of 65,000 a year with excellent benefits.

And most people don't know we exist.

Brian Lord, a native of New Iberia and cochairman and CEO of Creative Artists Agency, recently alluded to efforts underway in Louisiana to open a charter school to teach high school kids the film trade.

Modeled after the Roy Ball film and TV magnet school in Los Angeles.

Little school.

We started there a bunch of people here from Louisiana and New York that are starting schools like our school in Roybal, and it was George Clooney's idea.

That's a below the line school that I actually partnered with us on.

To their credit.

So you can make deals with unions.

I had C stands for the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.

It's a trade union for behind the scenes entertainment industry workers in the film industry lingo.

Their jobs, what they're referred to as below the line jobs typically behind the camera.

These public charter schools aim to train high school students for these well-paying jobs.

A strong tax incentive paired with a skilled entertainment industry, workforce production infrastructure, plus a robust film investment fund could set the stage for Louisiana to reclaim its title as Hollywood South.

I would love to see our our government create some sort of Louisiana film fund that would help indigenous filmmakers make their own projects.

And it wouldn't necessarily need to be the entire budget, but maybe it's a big chunk that's an investment in the state and their own people.

I always tell somebody, if you need something done fast, how often?

Because we work harder and faster than anybody I know.

We touch every industry.

So it's really just getting out there and letting our citizens of Louisiana know that we're here and that we need their help and we're going to need their help when we get back to work here in the New Year.

You can watch the road dance on all digital platforms and in select theaters.

Well, Louisiana's place in history as an epicenter of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and sixties now has a permanent physical place for the public to learn about this pivotal time.

Louisiana is preserving and telling stories of the people and places that fostered social change into cultural experiences.

A new civil rights museum that opened this month in New Orleans and the civil rights trail around the state.

I toured both experiences that retrace the footsteps of Louisiana's civil rights advocates and important moments in history.

The Ernest in Morial Convention Center welcomes visitors from around the world for Commerce, cuisine and cultural experiences as the site of Louisiana's new Civil Rights Museum.

Visitors and Louisianians can now learn about pivotal moments and people in the state's civil rights movement.

So the exhibit is divided into three themed story pathways.

We have the right to assemble.

We have the right to vote and the right to education.

And at the beginning of each pathway, you have legacy stories that show the foundation of these different pathways.

Interactive experiences, including oral histories and videos, offer firsthand accounts of segregation and the efforts to achieve social and racial equality in Louisiana.

During the 1950s and sixties.

That was the year of the bus boycott.

It took black people, white people, men, women, people from all backgrounds to really come together.

And as you watch some of the media and videos, you will really see how visceral the whole experience is of the Civil Rights Museum, of the Civil Rights Trail through the markers.

And hopefully it resonates with you in a way that you can move forward in your life and want to make a change of your own.

The history of Louisiana's civil rights movement is filled with powerful images and events.

In 1953, the nation's first bus boycott, led by Baptist Minister T.J. Jemison, occurred in Baton Rouge.

The event served as a model for the Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama in 1955.

In New Orleans on November 14th, 1960, six year old Ruby Bridges became a symbol of public school integration As the only African-American student to attend William Frantz Elementary in 1967.

Students marched from Bogalusa to Baton Rouge, some 106 miles, protesting violence against African-Americans.

So the real heroes at first stood up, stood up here in Louisiana.

And to finally recognize them on a national level is pretty special for Louisiana.

Louisiana civil Rights Museum tells part of the story.

The other half of that story is throughout the state of Louisiana, along the civil rights trail, which marks important places where pivotal moments in the state's civil rights movement happened.

It's a series of life sized sculptures honoring significant locations in the civil rights movement.

It was very emotional when we put those markers up across Louisiana.

Each medal figure is a human silhouette weighing over £200 and standing six feet tall.

The markers are a way for people to be up close and personal with the actual people who are on the front lines.

And I thought that was a better way to do it than just apply.

The latest marker to debut on the civil rights trail is in Natchitoches at the Texas and Pacific Railroad Depot.

It's one of the last remaining examples of segregated public facilities.

The site was a conduit for the Great Migration as African-Americans migrated from rural communities in the South to larger cities in the north and west.

So hopefully a lot of these areas where these markers are going up or or economically depressed areas, it will breathe new life into those communities all over Louisiana.

So it'll have a historical recognition and economic impact.

And we're putting it into a program that can be downloaded in schools that we can tell this story to for generations to come and honor those men and women that stood up and sat down at a time when they risked their life to do so.

Along the civil rights trail, a marker in front of Dooky Chase's Restaurant in New Orleans, commemorating this site as a common meeting point for leaders of the civil rights movement.

I said, How can we make the most impactful, powerful piece of art that when people walk up and engage with it, they feel like they are in fact with the people who are on the front lines.

And it's a very immersive experience.

So we really were aiming for people to feel like, Oh, I am looking at a protester during the civil rights movement.

And I think that I think that has been accomplished.

In Baton Rouge.

A marker stands at A.Z.

Young Park, the Louisiana Old State Capitol, and the Kress Department Store Building.

Each is a memory keeper and a truth teller of Louisiana's struggles and successes.

Together, the civil rights trail and the Civil Rights Museum create a cultural narrative that aims to reconcile all the wrongs of the past with a promise of a more just future.

Deep in the swampy marshes of Cajun country, a threat lingers in the darkness of the night, waiting to lure an unlucky victim to their demise.

With folklorist Barry Onslow as our guide, we'll take a trip deep into the swamp to learn the legend of the Feufollet.

Deep in the heart of Louisiana's bayou.

It's easy to lose your way in the night.

Maybe it's the darkness.

Or is it the shadows?

Or is it the spirit of the faithful?

Can you find me?

Can you find me?

One can only hope that if they are ever so unlucky as to cross paths with this entity.

That they make it home alive.

Many people describe them as the souls of on baptized babies who were roaming in limbo.

And you would see their the light of their souls at night.

And people used to claim that they would try to lure people away from the right path, you know, like get them lost in the prairies of the woods.

My aunt and uncle remember it and told us lots of stories about seeing, you know, you know, the round bales that you see out now.

They were as big as that.

And they would roll.

They would roll and bounce, you know, along the ground.

That's what they said.

Big lights, big, huge balls of fire, light rolling.

And my aunt specified that they look blue, whitish blue, blue.

There was a blue tint to them.

As the story goes, the faint light of the food fill would shine for travelers walking Louisiana's roads and bayous at night.

They'd see the spirit of the UN baptized child in the distance and confuse it for a candle or lantern that led them home.

But as they folded, the lights would lead them further into the darkness and sometimes toward their death.

People would often tell stories about how they saw of they saw light down the way, thinking, Oh, that's the light at the house I'm trying to get to.

The lantern at the house I'm trying to get to.

But then it would it would move.

And so I must have gotten turned around.

I've dealt with this with a lot of this way, and they would get lost in the woods when in fact it would the light was moving.

So it's trying to trick you.

Trying to trick you.

They weren't so malevolent.

They weren't evil.

They weren't considered evil.

They were considered just rascally or, you know, impish playing tricks on people.

But sometimes the tricks had consequences.

Though the name of this story is uniquely Cajun, the origin is not so much.

The Feufollet is loosely based on the European will of the wisp, which is a ghost fairy or elemental spirit that seeks to lead you astray.

The ball of light it emits is usually blue, and you could find them late at night in bogs or low lying wet areas.

When the French settle in Louisiana.

They change the name too forcefully.

The food means fire and way loosely translates to wisp.

Why are they on baptize babies specifically.

On baptize babies where, you know, described as being in limbo, wandering around between.

You can't get it to heaven but can't be sent to hell.

According to Catholic tradition and or belief.

And so I guess the notion of them wandering sort of caught and can't can't go anywhere else may have had something to do with it.

Now, there are a number of reasons for this story and not all of them are exciting.

In fact, most of them are scientific.

The light that travelers saw was most likely a product of gas.

Bury took me to a lot on his property, where his aunt encountered the food fully to give me a better idea.

If you cut hay and it gets wet before you bale it, sometimes it produces methane and it will spontaneously combust.

We had a a fire that the fire department had to come and put out some bales of hay that got that were baled, wet.

And they they started smoldering and caught fire.

So if people had just cut their hay and there were clumps and it got wet, it'll start rotting and produce methane and sometimes catch fire.

For all of you who don't know, a methane fire is sometimes blue berries.

Home is located near an old oil well site that produced the gas.

This is your well site.

So it was sort of a naturally low occurring spot.

And then right, right behind those big trees, that tree line right there.

There's a swamp.

Swamp.

It gets, you know, holds about as much water, maybe sometimes in heavy rains that hold this much water.

My my dad and uncle used to go catfishing in there, in fact.

And that was another naturally occurring little spot.

So would, you know, a spot that would have likely produced gas from decomposition.

Berries less explanation is a little more unconventional, but gas produced by cows on location could have also produced enough methane to cause a spark.

Now, if you ever come across the Food Valley, here's what you should do.

You could avoid having them make you get lost by planting a multi blade knife, a pocket knife into a fencepost or a stump and, you know, sticking it.

And and apparently the buffalo was interested in its own reflection and would come and dance around the blades and, you know, play in the blades.

And that way you could get away.

I'm not here to tell you what's true or not.

That's up to you to decide.

But this Halloween, when you're walking through the darkness, don't follow the light.

You may not come back.

I've got to say, I've never heard of the Feufollet.

That is fascinating folklore.

It definitely is.

So don't get lost that night.

Well, that's our show for this week.

Remember, you can watch anything, Be any time, wherever you are.

With our help PBS out.

You can catch L.P.B News and public affairs shows, as well as other Louisiana programs you've come to enjoy over the years.

And please like us on Facebook and Instagram.

For everyone at Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

I'm Karen LeBlanc, and I'm Kara St.Cyr until next time.

That's the state we're in.

Every day I go to work for Entergy.

I know customers are counting on me.

So Entergy is investing millions of dollars to keep the lights on and installing new technology to prevent outages before they happen.

Together, together.

Together.

We power life.

Additional support provided by the Fred Bea and Ruth Zigler Foundation and the Zeigler Art Museum located in Jennings City Hall.

The museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for Southwest Louisiana and the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana.

Public Broadcasting.

With support from viewers like you.