Cancer Alley

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BSU professor’s film collaboration wins an international film festival award

Thursday, 7 November, 2024

A BSU professor is part of a team which has recently won an international award for their documentary film project, Cancer Alley. 

Cancer Alley, created by poet and BSU Professor of Creative Enterprise and the Spoken Word, Lucy English in collaboration with filmmakers Pamela Falkenberg and Jack Cochran, received the Edward Snowden Award at the 22° Festival international Signes de Nuit in Paris. The Edward Snowden Award honours films which ‘offer sensitive, mostly unknown information, facts and phenomena of eminent importance, for which the festival wishes a wide proliferation in the future.’   

The film documents environmental destruction in 'Cancer Alley', Louisiana, the heart of the global petrochemical industry, and features a poem written by Lucy which was inspired by the accounts of those living in the region. The project draws attention to 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 judges commented:  

“The short documentary-like movie contrasts – using classical split-screen technique – footage of a dystopian, overcrowded area in Louisiana with images of the surrounding forests; the lyrics of the poem are its only comment. Between Baton Rouge and New Orleans 150 petrochemical plants and oil refineries are settled, polluting air, water and ground. It is known that people who live here are diagnosed with cancer at a higher-than-average rate. Cancer Alley is a startling document of the reckless and ruthlessly capitalistic greed and its deadly consequences. Or as the poem asks: If we are aware why do we do nothing?”  

Lucy said: 

“I am delighted that Cancer Alley has won this award which honours film as a medium to explore important messages about our environment.” 

Cancer Alley has been screened at more than 22 film and short film festivals. Lucy has recently returned from a screening in Lund, Sweden, where she presented the film and talked about its creation.  

The film has also been developed into an immersive hologram installation by Simon Luscombe from Holotronica which was screened at The Watershed, Bristol, during the Lyra Bristol Poetry Festival 2024 in April. 

You can find out more and watch a trailer for Cancer Alley on their project website.