29
Oct/14

THE GREAT INVISIBLE

29
Oct/14
Latham Smith

Tugboat captain Latham Smith participated in the massive cleanup needed after explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico

THE GREAT INVISIBLE (Margaret Brown, 2014)
Village East Cinema
181-189 Second Ave. at 12th St.
Opens Wednesday, October 29
212-529-6799
www.villageeastcinema.com
www.takepart.com

Shortly after the fatal Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion on April 20, 2010, dumped more than two hundred million gallons of BP oil into the Gulf of Mexico, Alabama native and award-winning documentarian Margaret Brown (The Order of Myths, Be Here to Love Me: A Film about Townes Van Zandt) returned to the Gulf Coast, where she was raised, in order to make a very personal film about the disaster. But she ended up with so much more in The Great Invisible, a powerful, infuriating exploration of the tragedy and its lingering effects on the environment and local communities in Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas. Showing that the calamity is far from over, Brown speaks with survivor Douglas Brown, the chief mechanic on the rig who talks poignantly about what happened, sharing footage he took of the rig prior to the explosion; survivor Stephen Stone, a roustabout on the rig who now suffers from PTSD; attorney Keith Jones, whose son, Gordon, was one of the eleven workers killed in the explosion, and is now leading the fight to get justice for the victims in court; Latham Smith, a tugboat captain who was called in to help with the cleanup; oil and gas industry veteran Bob Cavnar, author of Disaster on the Horizon: High Stakes, High Risks, and the Story Behind the Deepwater Well Blowout; Roosevelt Harris, who volunteers for the Hemley Road Church of Christ Mobile Food Pantry, delivering food and emotional support to families whose livelihoods have been impacted by the disaster; a group of oil industry executives chatting among themselves; and Kenneth Feinberg, the dispute resolution specialist in charge of administering the BP Deepwater Horizon Disaster Victim Compensation Fund, which has not exactly made much of a difference. BP refused to participate in the film.

Residents of Hardluck City seem resigned to their fate in THE GREAT INVISIBLE

Residents of Hardluck City are facing a bleak future in THE GREAT INVISIBLE

Brown supplements the film with devastating footage of the oil spill itself, maps that detail the breadth of the disaster, clips from congressional hearings that have gone nowhere, and news reports that have gotten fewer and fewer more than four years after the explosion. “Generally, it takes some kind of a traumatic event to change people’s behavior,” Cavnar says. “I’d hoped that the Deepwater Horizon was going to raise everybody’s consciousness, but it didn’t. And that’s the tragedy.” Winner of the Grand Jury prize at the SXSW Film Festival, The Great Invisible is the kind of documentary that you hope will raise people’s consciousness, especially that of the oil industry itself and the government, but, as the film shows, that appears to be highly unlikely as wealthy corporations once again trump regular citizens. The Great Invisible opens October 29 at the Village East; Brown will participate in Q&As after screenings on October 29 & 30 at 7:40 and November 1 at 2:00.