The True Story Behind the Set of “Beasts of the Southern Wild”
‘The Bathtub’ really is slipping into the Gulf of Mexico
and the remaining inhabitants may soon be environmental
refugees
A year after the indie movie Beasts of the Southern Wild took the Sundance Film Festival by storm, it is now one of the surprise hit nominees of the 2013 Academy Awards. The film got four Oscar nominations, including Best Movie, Best Director (Benh Zeitlin), Best Adapted Screen Play, and Best Actress for 6-year-old Houma native Quvenhane Wallis.
All photos by Julie DermanskyChildren in the Biloxi-Chimacha-Choctaw tribe run over a bridge that crosses a bayou to get totheir home on Isle de Jean Charles.
If you’ve seen the movie, you know something about the raw, haunting beauty of southern Louisiana’s coastal landscape. And you might remember that film depicts a place and a people that are imperiled. What you might not know is how true-to-life the story is.
Today Isle de Jean Charles and Pointe au Chien, a part of Terrebonne Parish locals call “The Bathtub,” are threatened by costal erosion and political red tape.Coastal erosion is a major threat along much of the Louisiana shoreline. The levees that girdle the Lower Mississippi River have robbed the delta of the silt deposits necessary to keep the low-lying land from disappearing under the constant pressure of the tides. Louisiana’s large the oil and gas industry have cut channels and canals throughout the marshland, fueling saltwater intrusion and further contributing to shoreline erosion. Since 1930 the Louisiana coast has lost about 190,000 square miles of land, an area the size of Rhode Island.
See the rest of the story at the following link:
No comments:
Post a Comment