For three weeks in 1997, the documentary filmmaker Will Horton followed Allison “Tootie” Montana, the Big Chief of the Yellow Pocahontas Hunters, as the esteemed Mardi Gras Black masking Indian constructed his 50th Carnival suit. 

Horton, a native New Orleanian, had been commissioned to direct a five-minute video of Montana as part of a 1997 photo exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art showcasing Montana’s artistry. The effort became “Testimony of a Big Chief,” a 30-minute documentary on Montana’s achievements and the legacy he passed on to Darryl Montana, who celebrated his own half-century of masking this spring. And after being lost for more than two decades, “Testimony of a Big Chief” is about to return to the screen.

Sitting at the table where Montana sewed his Mardi Gras suits, Horton, then 25, witnessed the creative labor poured into the masking Indian’s construction of the suit that marked his last before retirement. The documentary captures tearful conversations between Montana and his son Darryl, who was preparing to assume his father’s title as chief. Horton also documented impassioned reflections from Montana’s artistic contemporaries and friends, providing a peek into the inner workings of a tight-knit cultural community.

“The words he spoke about himself and how he’s tied to the New Orleans community were so profound,” Horton said. “I was like, ‘Okay, wait, I need some more tape.’” 

A few months after the elder Montana died at the age of 82 in 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the city, and all footage of the short film was lost amid its destruction — or so the creators thought. But last year, 25 years after the documentary first aired and 100 years after the elder Montana’s birth, Chandra McCormick and Keith Calhoun, the film’s producers, stumbled upon a box of still photography negatives that held a DVD copy of the film. 

Learning that the documentary had been located felt like a “sigh of relief,” Horton said. While he knew the legacy of Montana reverberates throughout the city in other ways — through the artistry of his son, the statue of Montana in Louis Armstrong Park, and the celebration of Tootie Montana Day — he also wanted to commemorate the Mardi Gras Indian’s life at Loyola University, where he teaches filmmaking. 

So he organized a screening and panel discussion of the film scheduled for Thursday (Dec. 14) at the university — one that quickly sold out. 

Audience members who were able to snag a ticket for the event will view the film and then hear a panel discussion featuring Horton, McCormick, Calhoun, the younger Montana and Willie Birch, an artist and longtime friend of the elder Montana. 

Lola Bessoff, a sophomore at Loyola and aspiring documentary filmmaker moderating the discussion, said she hopes to speak with Darryl Montana about the evolution of the Yellow Pocahontas Hunters and the new chief’s role within this evolution. 

When Darryl Montana misses his father, he says he can pop in a DVD of one of several documentaries featuring the chief of chiefs. “And there he is again,” Montana said in an interview with Verite News. But he thinks the excitement for the newly-discovered documentary shows how the general public is thirsting for a way to reconnect with Tootie Montana. The film reminds Darryl Montana of the indebtedness that he feels toward his father and grandfather, both of whom were chiefs of the Yellow Pocahontas Hunters before him, as well as his great-grandfather’s brother, considered to be the first Black masking Indian. 

“I think I do pretty good myself,” he said of his own work, which has been featured in public collections and awarded prestigious fellowships. “But I did not bring this to the table. My dad did and my grandfather did, so I stand on their shoulders.” 

Darryl Montana’s tribute to his father and grandfather is a way of keeping their legacy alive — the annual practice of handmaking the three-dimensional, colorful suits, which can take 5,000 hours to create, is not passed down in writing. “There is not a book or a menu that instructs you on how to do it,” he said. “The only thing that I had to go by is what I saw my father do and he did the same thing with his dad.” 

In Horton’s documentary, the city’s culture bearers challenge the idea that art is only taught, made, and presented in institutions like schools and museums. In the film, Horton interviews renowned New Orleans artists, including his friend Birch and John Scott. The traditions of the Black masking Indians may not look like “high art” to some audiences, the artists told Horton, but there is no other way to define it. 

“Someone was surprised once when I referred to Tootie as an artist,” Scott says in the film. “I don’t know what else he could possibly be. What the man does is art.” 

For Horton’s students, the screening will also be an opportunity for further research on the Black masking Indians in New Orleans. After the event, the students will work on producing short nonfiction films that honor the city’s specific cultural and artistic traditions. 

Bessoff, for instance, said she was inspired by the perspective of Tootie Montana’s wife, Joyce, who tirelessly helped Tootie Montana with the creation of his suits — filling in every sequin, she says in the movie — for 44 years. Bessoff now plans to look into the role that women play within Mardi Gras Indian tribes. “She’s kind of taken this role of the support, almost like the curator of his persona,” Bessoff said. “It would be really interesting to kind of talk with [women in Mardi Gras Indian tribes] and see if there are now women that perform and also choose to mask.”  

Montana and Horton are in the process of organizing a public screening in early January around Tootie Montana Day (Jan. 6), marking the start of Carnival season. For the event, Darryl Montana and the other members of the Yellow Pocahontas Hunters plan to gather around Tootie Montana’s statue to read, pray, sing, and watch the newly revived film.

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Josie Abugov is an undergraduate fellow at Harvard Magazine and the former editor-at-large of The Crimson’s weekly magazine, Fifteen Minutes. Abugov has previously interned for the CNN Documentary Unit...