NEWSROOM
Louisiana
Sea Grant Project To Be Featured in IMAX Film
May 3, 2005
BATON ROUGE –
Louisiana Sea Grant’s Coastal Roots project will be featured
in the IMAX film “Hurricane Warning,” scheduled for
release in June 2006. Twenty sixth graders from Montegut Middle
School in Terrebonne Parish, La., planted black mangrove trees
along Bayou Dularge during the last week of April while filmmakers
captured the wetlands restoration project on film.
Wetlands reduce hurricane
storm surges by absorbing the squall’s energy. It takes
one to three miles of wetlands to reduce a hurricane surge by
one foot. Louisiana is losing approximately 35 square miles of
wetlands each year.
Through Sea Grant’s
Coastal Roots Seeding Nursery Project, students in grades 4-12
in 10 parishes have established nurseries at their schools to
grow native Louisiana wetland plants. The students oversee the
entire growth cycle of the plants from seed collection to plantings
at wetland restoration sites. Participation in Coastal Roots gives
students a sense of stewardship toward natural resources and provides
an active learning situation in which they can explore strategies
for sustaining coastal ecosystems.
“Hurricane Warning”
is directed by Greg MacGillivray and produced by MacGillivray
Freeman Films of Laguna Beach, Calif. In charge of the Coastal
Roots shoot was Louisiana filmmaker Glen Pitre, whose films include
Belizaire the Cajun, Time Served and The Home Front.
MacGillivray was first
nominated for an Academy Award in 1995 for The Living Sea (Best
Documentary Short Subject) and was nominated in the same category
again for Dolphins in 2000. In 1998, the company's film about
climbing the world's tallest peak, Everest, became the first large-format
film ever to reach Variety’s Top 10 Box Office Chart. In
1996, the company's first IMAX theatre classic, To Fly!, was selected
by the Library of Congress for inclusion in America's film archives.
Since its
establishment in 1968, Louisiana Sea Grant has worked to promote
stewardship of the state’s coastal resources through a combination
of research, education and outreach programs critical to the cultural,
economic and environmental health of Louisiana’s coastal
zone. Louisiana Sea Grant, based at Louisiana State University,
is part of the National Sea Grant Program, a network of 30 programs
in each of the U.S. coastal and Great Lakes states and Puerto
Rico/U.S. Virgin Islands.
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Filmmaker
Glen Pitre captures on film Montegut Middle School students
and Louisiana Sea Grant research associate Rachel Somers
planting black mangrove trees. |
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