The Great Invisible

Premiered April 20, 2015

Directed by

Margaret Brown

Crew members, families, fishermen, and others still haunted by the Deepwater Horizon explosion provide first-hand accounts of their experience.

EXPLORE THE FILM

About the Documentary

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.

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 — those who survived or lost their lives on the rig, and the ordinary citizens of the Gulf Coast whose livelihoods were damaged.

For The Great Invisible, 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.

The “great invisible” that gives the film its title is still out there — 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.

The Filmmakers

A native of Mobile, Alabama, filmmaker Margaret Brown's The Great Invisible premiered at the 2014 SXSW Film Festival where it won the Documentary Competition's Grand Jury Prize. Radius-TWC distributed the film to rave reviews in the fall of 2014. Brown received the 2010 Peabody Award for her second documentary feature, The Order of Myths (Independent Lens, 2009). The film also received the Truer Than Fiction Award at the 2009 Independent Spirit Awards and was nominated for Best Documentary. Previously, Brown was the recipient of the Cinematic Vision Award at the 2008 Silverdocs Film Festival and won the 2008 Grierson Sheffields Youth Jury Award. She has been nominated for four Cinema Eye awards including Best Documentary and Best Director. Brown’s first feature was the acclaimed documentary Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and received worldwide theatrical distribution. Brown is the recipient of a 2012 United States Artists fellowship.

Gigantic Pictures is the New York-based independent production company run by Brian Devine, Jason Orans, and Jennifer Small. In addition to Cosmopolitan, Gigantic Pictures produced The Suitor for PBS, a narrative film based on a story by the Dominican American author Julia Alvarez. Additional productions include an adaptation of Bernard Malamud’s The First Seven Years starring Israel Horovitz and Carol Kane, which was broadcast nationally on PBS; The Third Date, starring Sandra Bernhard, Xander Berkeley, and Sarah Clark, which premiered at the 2003 Tribeca Film Festival and played the 2003 London Film Festival; Drena De Niro’s documentary Girls and Dolls, which premiered on WNET; and Israel Horovitz’s autobiographical documentary about 9/11, Three Weeks After Paradise, which premiered on Bravo. Gigantic is currently in post-production on Satellite, a feature film by the writer/director Jeff Winner (You Are Here).

Full Credits