One-third of the state's children live in poverty. Consistently ranked among the poorest states per capita in the country, Louisiana has one of the nation's worst educational systems, the highest illiteracy rate, and the lowest proportion of people connected to the Internet. While big business benefits from the fact that Cancer Alley delivers 25% of the nation's petrochemical product, Louisiana languishes. Unfortunately, no one can realistically imagine living without the products of the petrochemical industry, which supplies the key ingredients used in every single nonorganic product imaginable, from oil and gas to plastics and even - as spokesperson Betsy Baker Miller glibly points out - the raw film on which Dunn shot Green. As Dunn puts it, " This is the modern plantation."
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Instead, Green concentrates directly on the problem of Cancer Alley and the people it affects, victims stuck living on polluted property so drastically devalued by its toxicity levels that the residents are no more free to leave today than some of their ancestors would have been 150 years ago, when slave owners controlled the same land where the petrochemical plants now stand. 17.īut unlike Erin Brockovich, Dunn's documentary isn't just another blow-by-blow account out to valorize some real-life civil action hero. For the past two years, while pursuing a masters degree in film at UT, Dunn has been traveling to Louisiana during every semester break, investigating the situation there, interviewing the locals, and assembling her experiences in Green, showing at the Alamo Drafthouse this Sunday, Dec. Dunn recognized the same terrifying symptoms Brockovich had witnessed from her own tour of Cancer Alley, the toxic 100-mile stretch along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, where approximately 150 petrochemical plants command the land. Not out of helplessness or relief, but because she identified with the character. (Photo By Ada Calhoun)įilmmaker Laura Dunn loved Erin Brockovich. The film screens at the Alamo Drafthouse this Sunday. While pursuing her masters in film at UT, Laura Dunn spent every semester break in Louisiana making Green, a documentary about the toxic 100-mile stretch along the Mississippi River known as Cancer Alley.
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