Gather the living record
Organize existing interviews, transcripts, stills, research, and public-history material before more voices are lost.
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.
What the work is protecting
Voices that cannot be recorded again.
The project grows from recorded testimony, community trust, and years of local documentary work. Lawrence Andry and several other subjects have passed. Their words now carry a responsibility: to be preserved with care, shaped with authorship, and placed 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, 2:03:25A 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, 1:16:45A 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, 10:01A concise historical frame for South Alabama Creole identity, tracing colonial roots, land, race, Jim Crow, family memory, and survival through testimony.
Feature documentary in development
Unearthing 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
Project plan
From local record to authored feature.
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.
About Glen and Dakota
Family, film, and the work of remembering.
This work is personal before it is public. Glen and Dakota's films grew from family, place, research, and a shared belief that South Alabama Creole stories deserve to be seen, heard, and carried forward.
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.
A younger-generation voice carrying the history forward.
- 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 for a father-daughter collaboration rooted in memory and place.
Memory
Dedicated and in memory of:
Their voices, work, service, humor, and stories remain part of this record.
Lawrence Andry
September 10, 1939 - March 12, 2025
Robert Curtis Andry
March 22, 1925 - January 9, 2025
Deputy Chief Alexander G. Trenier
January 17, 1962 - February 23, 2025
Raymond Henningburg
August 17, 1940 - July 12, 2025
Michael Chastang Sr.
Dates to be confirmed
Edward Otis
Dates to be confirmed
Derek Labeaud
March 8, 1962 - November 2, 2020