BORN ON THE BAYOU

“Belizaire the Cajun,” the $900,000 indie film about pre-Civil War vigilantism (with Armand Assante as a victimized Cajun healer) that just opened in Louisiana, is but one of several Cajun-themed pics awaiting release. Plus:

Tri-Star’s “Untitled Richard Gere Project” (was “The Louisiana Project”), directed by Richard Pearce, with Kim Basinger as a Cajun involved with detective Gere.

Fox’s “Nothing But the Truth,” directed by Jim McBride, starring Dennis Quaid as a Cajun-descended detective.

Island’s “Down by Law,” directed by Jim Jarmusch, set in New Orleans, with a milieu described as “not so much Cajun as eerie and mysterious.”

“Belizaire,” due to open in major cities later this spring, was developed at the Sundance Institute by writer/director/producer Glen Pitre and financed locally by a partnership of doctors, oilmen, crawfish farmers and hot-sauce manufacturers. It’s the first English-language film for Pitre, who traces his Cajun ancestry back three centuries.

Pitre’s villains are non-Cajuns, a switch on the anti-Cajun images in such pictures as “Southern Comfort.” “They needed a group of faceless villains, and they picked Cajuns because hillbillies had been done,” Pitre said by phone from his home base, Cut Off, La. “Actually, Cajuns tend to be hospitable to a fault.”