On April 20, 2010, communities throughout the Gulf Coast of the United States were devastated by the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, a state-of-the-art offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico drilling a well owned in majority by BP. The blast killed 11 of the 126 crewmembers and injured many more, setting off a fireball that was seen 35 miles away. After burning for two days, the Deepwater Horizon sank, precipitating the largest offshore oil spill in American history.<\/p>\n
The spill flowed unabated for almost three months, dumping hundreds of millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic ocean, shutting down the local fishing industry, polluting the fragile ecosystem, and raising serious questions about the safety of continued deep-water offshore drilling. In the wake of the disaster, media coverage often overlooked the human stories in the aftermath \u2014 those who survived or lost their lives on the rig, and the ordinary citizens of the Gulf Coast whose livelihoods were damaged.<\/p>\n
For The Great Invisible<\/i>, filmmaker Margaret Brown traveled to small towns and major cities across Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas to explore the fallout of the environmental disaster. Years later, Gulf state residents still haunted by the Deepwater Horizon explosion provide first-hand accounts of their ongoing experience, long after the story has faded from the front page.<\/p>\n
The \u201cgreat invisible\u201d that gives the film its title is still out there \u2014 the unseen crude that sunk to the ocean floor, the unanswered questions about the consequences of oil consumption on a massive scale, and the forgotten people whose lives were forever changed by the disaster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Crew members, families, fishermen, and others still haunted by the Deepwater Horizon explosion provide gripping first-hand accounts of their experience in a disaster that had tragic repercussions up and down the Gulf Coast and beyond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":8295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"topic":[1219,1225],"class_list":["post-322","films","type-films","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","topic-health-and-environment","topic-politics-and-government"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n