South Alabama Creole documentary work

Of This Place: The Creoles of South Alabama

A body of documentary work preserving Gulf Coast Creole voices, public service, family land, language memory, and the histories that survived where public record fell silent.

View the films See the feature plan

What the work is protecting

Voices that cannot be recorded again.

This project grows from recorded testimony, community trust, and years of local documentary work. Some of the people who entrusted their stories to these recordings are no longer here to tell them again. Their voices remain, full of memory, humor, faith, courage, and love for the places they called home. I carry a responsibility to listen closely, preserve their words with care, and bring them forward within the larger story of South Alabama and the Gulf Coast.

Documentary body of work

Three films, one larger story.

The emotional center

In His Own Words: Lawrence Andry

Raw, unedited, uncut testimony, 2:03:25

A raw, unedited, and uncut testimony from a South Alabama Creole elder whose memories move through cattle, hunting, brickwork, school, racism, faith, humor, and language.

Public service and civil-rights memory

Creole Fire Number 1 - Mobile's First Brotherhood

Documentary, 1:12:51

A record of Creole Fire Company No. 1 and the men whose service connects family history, segregation, integration, mentorship, discipline, and Mobile civic life.

The proof of concept

Unearthing the Forgotten Heritage

Short documentary, 10:01

A concise historical frame for South Alabama Creole identity, tracing colonial roots, land, race, Jim Crow, family memory, and survival through testimony.

Oyster boats working in Mobile Bay, Alabama, in 1911

Oyster boats loading the barge, The Reef, Mobile Bay, Alabama, 1911. Lewis Hine, Library of Congress.

Feature documentary in development

Of This Place: The Creoles of South Alabama

The feature asks what it means to be Creole in South Alabama, and what happens when a community's identity survives in families, churches, land, work, and memory while remaining largely unseen in public history.

What survives in one person's voice that no archive can replace?

Land Family memory Creole language Faith Labor Jim Crow Public service Migration Identity

From the Project Journal

The film is
taking shape.

Read all updates

Mon Louis Island

September 9, 2026

A next step on the Mon Louis Island lead

This morning I moved the Mon Louis Island research from a promising lead toward a clearer path for viewing, permissions, and future outreach.

Read the update

Voices

September 5, 2026

Bringing the Andry interviews into the feature

Returning to Lawrence and Robert Curtis’s recorded words is bringing the human purpose of this film into focus.

Read the update

Mon Louis Island

September 4–5, 2026

Voices, land, and memory on Mon Louis Island

Earlier oral histories and historical photographs offer a possible bridge between remembered places and the film.

Read the update

Voices of This Place

Their voices
are still here.

Some of the people who shared their stories are no longer with us. Their interviews remain, and carrying those voices into this documentary is deeply personal to me.

Meet the voices

Life and Creole culture

Creole Fire #1

Historical perspectives

The conversations ahead

Project plan

From local record to finished public film.

Gather the living record

Organize existing interviews, transcripts, stills, research, and public-history material before more voices are lost.

Deepen the human circle

Interview elders, descendants, firefighters, historians, genealogists, churches, archivists, and younger family members carrying the identity forward.

Build the historical spine

Connect land records, census labels, church records, newspapers, family photographs, fire department history, and community knowledge.

Shape the feature

Create a substantial assembly or rough cut that moves between intimate testimony, public memory, place, archival record, and present-day meaning.

Release the finished film to the public

Complete the final cut, prepare the film for public exhibition, and pursue distribution through festivals, streaming platforms, educational partners, community screenings, and public-facing outlets so the story can reach audiences beyond South Alabama.

About the work

Film, family memory, and the work of remembering.

This work is personal before it is public. Glen's films grew from family, place, research, and a belief that South Alabama Creole stories deserve to be seen, heard, and carried forward.

Glen Perry

A filmmaker preserving voices before they disappear.

Independent documentary filmmaker and community historian based in South Alabama.
Directed, produced, filmed, lit, and edited long-form documentary work on Creole Fire Company No. 1 and Lawrence Andry's testimony.
As a creative director working with the Bureau of Indian Education, he has spent his professional life using photography and videography to hold family memory, public service, labor, language, and stories that might otherwise be forgotten.
Brings more than 30 years behind still and motion cameras, developing a patient eye for faces, light, work, and place that gives the films their intimate visual language.

Dakota Perry

Project associate, assistant, and intern.

Created Unearthing the Forgotten Heritage of South Alabama Creoles: A Living Legacy as a National History Day student documentary.
Won 1st Place Junior Individual Documentary at Alabama History Day 2020 and received the Junior Division Alabama Historical Association Award.
Her documentary became an early proof of concept for the larger feature and helped shape the younger-generation perspective behind the project.
Dakota is currently a student at the University of South Alabama, where she is majoring in Graphic Design. She will support Glen directly as a project associate, assistant, and intern through research, visual organization, and production support.

Dedication

Dedicated to

With gratitude to the people whose voices, work, service, humor, and stories have helped shape this documentary.

Of This Place: The Creoles of South Alabama

Voices that cannot be recorded again.