The Birth of an Environmental Justice Documentary

Near the beginning of my senior year of high school, I received an email from my guidance counselor about an opportunity to work as a storytelling intern at the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice (DSCEJ) in New Orleans, Louisiana. While I had some previous experience in editing and video production, all of my work was no longer than two–minute long promotionals or journalism segments on my school’s news show. The idea of what went into a long and detailed film production eluded me. So, when I sat on a Zoom meeting early one morning and one of my interviewers asked, “What ideas do you have for a final storytelling project” I said, with starry eyes and great expectations, “perhaps a documentary project.”

I would learn a few weeks later that I had been accepted. The following month, I arrived at the offices of the DCSEJ, which I had never realized was a short distance from my home in New Orleans East. My fellow interns and I were given a crash course on Cancer Alley’s history and current situation.

Mary Williams, the center’s director of community and student engagement, and John Warford Ph.D., assistant director of operations and training, told us all the important facts: that region has some of the worst air quality in the United States, that local government intervention has been most insufficient, but despite it all, several community activist organizations had arisen in the past few years to address these problems. Most surprising to me was that Cancer Alley’s name did not do justice to the fullness of its existence. It was an eighty-five mile stretch of land along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, with over two–hundred petrochemical plants and oil refineries. It not only boasted some of the highest cancer rates in the country, but it was also home to a large Black American population, many of whom had generational roots and residences in the alley.

As part of our internship, we would be taking a tour of the alley to familiarize us with the situation on the ground and to speak with several activists throughout the region. My film club advisor, Mr. Mark, had allowed me to borrow one of his Sony HD video cameras and a monopod to prepare.

The morning of the tour, it rained heavily as I departed along with several of the DSCEJ staff. As we drove, I saw that the rain had caused all the usual proclivities of the region to cease for a while. So, I was an undisturbed spectator to rusty petrochemical plants, sulfur deposits, and great expanses of land. Scared to miss a single thing, I turned on the camera and recorded … everything, nearly filling my memory card to the brim.

Our tour took a very non–linear approach. We stopped at the office of Robert Taylor, leader of the Concerned Citizens for St. John the Baptist Parish to speak about his fight against uncaring, local government officials. This was coupled with interviews and sit downs in Gordon Plaza, where for decades a landfill had plagued the community. I got to talk with Sharon Lavigne, activist and recipient of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Award, about her own personal journey. Lavigne, formerly a special education teacher, had advocated to successfully stop the construction of a billion-dollar plastics manufacturing plant alongside the Mississippi River in St. James Parish. On the two-hour drive back, my mind began to drift to panic. I painstakingly went over the footage I had gathered, and what followed was a pervading but elusive question: how am I going to make this all work?

I had interviews, voiceovers, and so many stills that I bet it would intimidate Ken Burns. Worse, that wasn’t even all. I still had the full year of my internship to go. From Zoom meetings on flood mapping (of which I only understood how to navigate to the website) to visits to the Sankofa Community Development Corporation and Wetland Park, my memory card became more and more filled, and inspiration escaped me even more.

As the internship came to a close, my final project was not at all in the place where I wished it to be. At the time, what I submitted in lieu of the original documentary was many interviews–filmed and voice-over–along with a wealth of environmental footage of grasslands, lakes, and parks. While the DSCEJ appreciated having these as resources for future cohorts, I still felt a sense of failure. I felt regret at hearing the plights of Cancer Alley’s residents but having nothing tangible from my time there. I felt like I had done a disservice to the people of Cancer Alley, and more so, to the greater environmental justice movement.

One day during the summer going into college, however, I opened my email to find a message from Ms. Williams. My stomach dropped immediately after reading the message.

The United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas–Greenfield, and the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) were planning a visit to the Sankofa office, and on behalf of the DSCEJ, they wanted me to present my final project. The issue? I didn’t have a “final project” per se.

Fortunately, I was given time to prepare. The solution? I had to get to work. I immediately went through my memory card, parsing through the interviews and anecdotes I thought would be the most powerful. While that was easy enough, I realized that my documentary had a larger problem. While my film and its subjects would be all too familiar to a resident of Louisiana, to the uninformed it was far less so. I soon found myself with a multi–page outline; one that delineated a script for a short history of Cancer Alley and the current situation of the residents there. But I soon came to understand that my work was still not finished. When I had finished running the documentary through all stages of production, I noticed that, like all good social justice documentaries, it had one thing missing: hope.

And to rectify it, I needed to go back and do research. I reached out to several individuals who I had learned were changemakers in environmental justice work throughout my time as an intern; and while I did not have any time to film new footage, I was able to create a montage of their personal anecdotes with archival footage showcasing their extensive work.

In the end, I watched my work over a million times, fretting over every detail – pictures that were on the screen for too long, a misspelled subtitle, a slightly obscure sound bite in an interview – but realized like all works of art, its creation had to be put to rest. I emailed my final work over to Ms. Williams and prepared for the presentation.

On the day of the presentation, my heart was ready to leap out of my chest. It sank even deeper when the guests piled into the room, not just the Ambassador, but also several individuals from the local community. I dreaded each time a speaker finished, and the program drew ever closer to me. Finally, it was my time. I loaded my documentary onto the center’s television screen, and pressed play.

The moments I thought cringy became sincere, the parts I thought shaky became shockingly informative. As the documentary progressed, I found my nerves becoming more settled. I began to realize more of what I liked about the documentary, rather than just seeing its flaws. More importantly, however, and what would be cemented in me long afterward, was the impact of my work. Somehow, a kid from New Orleans whose YouTube projects got no more than a couple dozen views was making a national impact through environmental filmmaking. At that moment, the power of documentary became very real. My passion for media took on another dimension, and I realized that it had not only power to inform, but to influence and persuade. It had the ability to tell a hundred different stories and perspectives in just a few minutes.

After the presentation, I went back and watched my documentary again. I realized at that moment that my final project would be anything but final. I had given my b–roll and disconnected ideas real form, but now their purpose had become elevated. Just as other documentarians had learned before, my work had transcended just the artform itself. Like Errol Morris and Michael Moore, I felt that my work had the opportunity to live a life outside the film, to say something about the world. I realized my film was living, and that for the environmental justice movement, it still had a lot to say.

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RCC National Environment Leadership Fellow — Landon Bishop – Yale University

Landon Bishop is a sophomore at Yale University, studying Ethics, Politics, Economics, and Urban Studies with a certificate in Education Studies. A believer in the power of digital media to tell far-reaching stories about the climate crisis, Landon is passionate about communicating environmental messages through filmmaking. In the summer before college, Landon was selected to present his environmental documentary work on the Cancer Alley region of Louisiana on behalf of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice to the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield and EPA Administrator Michael Regan. At Yale, he is leading the post-production process on a documentary for the School of Architecture’s Urban Media Project.