Cancer Alley is a poetry film project which features environmental destruction in 'Cancer Alley', Louisiana, the heart of the Global petrochemical industry.
The project draws attention for the need for multi-national companies to take more responsibility for their impact on the environment and the growing public awareness of how people’s lives are affected by extreme pollution. The film highlights the experiences of those who live in the polluted areas. We have chosen poetry film as the medium to share this message due to its direct way of expressing ideas and emotions. Although there no pollution in the UK as extreme as Cancer Alley we want the project to act as warning of what could happen if development expands without sufficient monitoring and firm legislation.
The message of the poetry film is a call for action as the viewer is encouraged to remember our duty to protect the natural world, our connection with all living beings and how fragile are our landscapes. The world is burning up. We need to change our ways. But plastic production is due to be tripled over the next thirty years. What can we do to combat this?
The poetry film of Cancer Alley has been created by US filmmakers Pamela Falkenberg and Jack Cochran of Outlier Moving Pictures who create short films for independent and experimental cinema. Their work has won many awards in short film and eco-film festivals. Jack Cochran and Pamela Falkenberg have been filming and taking static images in this region for the last two years and have built up a considerable portfolio of footage which has been used in the creation of this project.
The poetry for the film was written by Lucy English and was inspired by the accounts of those living in the region and also by the words of Manari Ushigua Santi, the indigenous leader and forest protector of the Sapara Nation of the Equadorian rainforest.
Cancer Alley has been developed into an immersive Hologram installation by Simon Luscombe from Holotronica. The hologram will be screened at The Watershed, Bristol, during the Lyra Bristol Poetry Festival 2024 from 18-21 April and has been funded by a Bath Spa University/AHRC Impact Acceleration Award to investigate the impact of an immersive poetry film project on those who currently engage with poetry film as a creative medium. These include poets, poetry filmmakers, poetry audiences, poetry promoters and researchers into VR literature.
