On March 25, 2009, the DGA Special Projects Committee inaugurated its new Documentary Series with a screening of Directors Tia Lessin and Carl Deal's Trouble the Water, a 2009 Academy Award Nominee for Best Documentary and winner of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize.

Trouble the Water examines life in Post-Katrina New Orleans using video shot by aspiring rap artist Kimberly Rivers Roberts. Lessin and Deal interwove their video footage with archival news segments and verite footage compiled over the subsequent two years. The film documents how Katrina survivors not only endured failed levees and bungling bureaucrats, but also specters from their own past.

Following the screening, Directors Lessin and Deal discussed the making of the film in a conversation moderated by Special Projects Documentary Screening Series subcommittee chair Chuck Workman.

The next presentation in the Documentary Series will feature director Marina Zenovich's Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, on Wednesday, May 13.