"Stories from the Gulf" Lets Victims of Oil Disaster Speak for Themselves

NRDC’s new movie about the BP oil disaster, “Stories from the Gulf”, presented by Robert Redford, premieres this Saturday, April 23rd on Discovery Planet Green at 2:30 p.m. Eastern.

It’s a powerful film about people hit hard by the largest oil spill in American history.

It’s about people like shrimp boat captain Darla Rooks, who tied a hangman’s noose on the back of her boat after realizing she might never again earn a living from the water. 

And Acy Cooper, a shrimper who expressed his fear and sadness about the disaster with an unanswerable question: “Whenever you do something like this all your life, how do you say you’re not going to do it tomorrow?”

And restaurant owner Hollie LeJeune, who said filing a claim with BP after the collapse of her family owned business was “like grieving for a death.”

As the film’s director, I’ve been living with the voices of Darla, Acy, Hollie and the movie’s 20 other subjects for months now.  Even after listening to them again and again as we cut the movie, their stories still choke me up.

That’s not just because of the hardship they’ve suffered but because of the powerful love they have for their land and water and for one another.  And also because of the inspiring courage and resilience they demonstrate.

No one sums that up better than Geraldine Ancar in the film’s closing moments. “Pass our story, our lives on,” she says.  “Give someone what we have in our hearts, and let them know that life on the bayou is a wonderful life.”

As many thousands of Gulf Coast residents struggle in the aftermath of America’s worst oil disaster, the least we can do is hear what Geraldine, Acy, Darla and Hollie have in their hearts -- and pass it on.

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