Alexander Glustrom: Mossville. When Great Trees Fall
“Mossville: When Great Trees Fall”, 2019, video still. Courtesy of Alexander Glustrom.
Shown here from 30 November to 30 December 2021, as part of the Climate Collective video screening series.
One man refuses to be forced off his family’s land as encroaching petrochemical plants threaten to destroy a historic African American community in Louisiana.
Mossville: When Great Trees Fall (2019) portrays a conflicted geography in Louisiana, deep in the US south. The film’s title names the town of a once-thriving community founded in 1790 by formerly enslaved and free people of colour, but dominated by the petrochemical industry in recent years. While most residents left long ago, having been bought out and escaped the toxic environment, the film directed by Alexander Glustrom focuses on one inhabitant-turned-activist who has chosen to remain against all odds. Stacey Ryan mounts an uphill battle against the South African energy and chemical company Sasol – a corporation that once served apartheid during a period of international sanctions – in this harrowing real-life tale of multi-generational dedication to land and community, fuelling remarkable ethical steadfastness against environmental racism in the afterlife of slavery.
— Climate Collective: T. J. Demos, Molemo Moiloa, Susan Schuppli and Paulo Tavares
Stacey Ryan in “Mossville: When Great Trees Fall”, 2019, video still. Courtesy of Alexander Glustrom.
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“Mossville: When Great Trees Fall”, 2019, video still. Courtesy of Alexander Glustrom.
“Mossville: When Great Trees Fall”, 2019, video still. Courtesy of Alexander Glustrom.
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↑ Sasolburg (Zamdela, South Africa) from “Mossville: When Great Trees Fall”, 2019, video still. Courtesy of Alexander Glustrom. |
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→ Sasol's plant in Secunda (South Africa) from “Mossville: When Great Trees Fall”, 2019, video still. Courtesy of Alexander Glustrom. |
Mossville, Louisiana: A once-thriving community founded by formerly enslaved and free people of colour, and an economically flourishing safe haven for generations of African American families. Today it’s a breeding ground for petrochemical plants and their toxic black clouds. Many residents are forced from their homes, and those that stay suffer from prolonged exposure to contamination and pollution. Amid this chaos and injustice stands one man who refuses to abandon his family’s land – and his community.
Alexander Glustrom is an award-winning documentary filmmaker who has directed, shot, produced, and edited a wide variety of film projects. His work has ranged from commercial, music, and art videos that have reached hundreds of thousands online, to documentaries that have been featured in film festivals internationally and won more than a dozen awards. He has shot footage that has aired on HBO, CNN, Fusion, NYtimes.com, Great Big Story and Democracy Now. He has also created a number of fundraising videos that have raised tens of thousands of dollars for New Orleans youth programs. Glustrom was awarded "Filmmaker of the Year" at the 2015 New Orleans Millennial Awards and named as one of New Orleans' "40 under 40 brightest and most innovative young people" by Gambit Magazine. His Mossville documentary received the Kathleen Bryan Edwards Human Rights Award from Full Frame Documentary Film Festival.
The Climate Emergency > Emergence public programme initiative energises critical analyses and creative proposals in moving beyond catastrophism and toward the emergence of environmentally sustainable futures. Interdisciplinary in breadth and international in scope, the programme is conceptualised by the newly-formed 2021 Climate Collective: T. J. Demos (USA), chair and chief-curator, Molemo Moiloa (South Africa), Susan Schuppli (UK), Paulo Tavares (Brazil), geared toward assembling diverse cultural practitioners working at the intersection of experimental arts and political ecology.
As part of the programme taking place from April until December 2021, the Climate Collective has curated an online video screening series featuring films by a variety of international and local practitioners around themes addressed in the ongoing events.
“maat Explorations” is a programme framework featuring an ongoing series of exhibitions, public and educational projects delving into the multi-faceted subject of environmental transformation from various scholarly and experimental vantage points – it brings philosophical and political perspectives forward, as well as sociocultural and technological investigations interwoven in speculative and critical practices in the arts and design at large.
Central to the discursive and critical effort of “maat Explorations” is the establishment of the Climate Collective, a rotating group of experts in the expanded field of contemporary art, design and technology that will each year propose a refreshed vision on the connection between creative practices, ecological thought and politics.
