The Frontier

Louisiana—

Although oil has finally stopped spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, work continues on The Frontier, a poetic documentary portrait of coastal Louisiana, one of the most beautiful, ecologically diverse and productive regions in America. In an attempt to create a picture of what it’s like to live on the margins of this vast, but vanishing edge of the country, The Frontier follows a charismatic cast of characters trying to make ends meet—some of the participants include a shrimper and bartender on Grand Isle, a swamp guide in Iberia Parish, and a 15 year-old high school student in Chauvin.

The film is being produced and directed by Jeremy Craig, graduate of the Columbia University film program whose most recent short film, Terrebonne, was scored by members of the four-time Grammy-nominated band, The Fray, and was funded through grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Louisiana Film Foundation and Kodak.
The Frontier was in pre-production when the Deepwater Horizon exploded, an event that Craig and associate producer Julie Engebretson are hesitant to discuss too closely in relation to the project. “Although the catastrophe will be addressed in the film, The Frontier was never meant to be about the oil spill,” said Engebretson. “Oil and natural gas, however, are a huge part of the culture of Louisiana and any honest portrait of the region has to include it in some way.” So, as many journalists, activists, and media personnel begin their slow withdrawal from the region, work on The Frontier continues uninterrupted. Having begun in late April, filming on The Frontier will be a yearlong process that is expected to conclude at the start of the next fishing season in May 2011.

Through strategic support from the Gulf Restoration Network, America’s Wetland Foundation, and the Louisiana Film Foundation, Craig has been able to get access to many prominent Louisianans, including Thomas Dardar, Jr. Tribal Chief of the United Houma Nation, Chris D’Elia, Dean of the LSU School of Coast and Environment, and Mike Tidwell, author of the classic, Bayou arewell. The Frontier crew is small—joining Craig and Engebretson are co-producer Jillian Schlesinger, associate producer, Christopher Brown, and director of photography, Gregory Kershaw. “That we’re ostensibly invisible gives us much more flexibility,” said Craig, who prefers having a small crew to a large one any day. “Being free and mobile comes in handy when you’re filming in extreme conditions and strange, sometimes tight, locations. Most importantly, it makes deciding where to eat lunch a lot easier.”

Subsidizing the first few production periods through small grants, The Frontier team is now funding the rest of the project on the run. Beginning today, Craig and company are in the midst of a critically important 35-day fundraising campaign on Kickstarter.com, a final push to raise the $12,000 needed to get them through the rest of production. “It’s a ton of money,” said Craig. “But I’m cautiously optimistic.”

Recently featured in the New York Times, NPR and Wired, Kickstarter is an innovative, crowdsourcing way to fund creative ventures based on donor rewards and an all-or-nothing model where projects must be fully funded before any money is exchanged. “We’ve tried to offer donors the best incentives possible because there’s a lot riding on this campaign,” said Engebretson. “There’s no back up plan.” Having formed partnerships with a number of eco-friendly companies and artists, donor perks include productions from Klean Kanteen, Ecobags, Defend the Coast T=shirts, Heads of State, Dakine, Colcasac, Union Square Café, and even a bit of Craig’s own swag—DVDs of Terrebonne and signed copies of his 2009 young adult novel, The Straits. On top of donor incentives, one percent of all the money raised by The Frontier team will be donated toward 1% For the Planet.

In addition to The Frontier, Craig is also collaborating with longtime friend and lifestyle photographer, Bryan Johnson, on a related photography essay project suitably titled The Coastal Frontier. Developing as a gallery exhibit and web archive, The Coastal Frontier aims to capture the region in a more curated and expressionistic way.

In a statement describing The Coastal Frontier, Craig writes that the photography project “not only records this transitional moment in Louisiana history, but recreates one as well. It is both a timely document of the here and now and a timeless restoration of a way of life in the bayou and on the great trembling prairies of southernmost Louisiana, one that nostalgically celebrates that old school bus in the sugarcane field, the fisherman up at dawn, the boarded up gas station, and the oyster bucket on the sun-turned wharf.”

Craig and his collaborators hope both The Frontier and The Coastal Frontier not only raise awareness about the environmental threats to Louisiana but also “reveal the dynamic relationship between the Cajun people and their coastal place—all in search of a purposeful design in this place that is both paradise and paradise lost.” With so many different but interrelated projects happening simultaneously, how does Craig keep them all straight? “I don’t,” he says with a smile. “But don’t tell anyone.”

To support The Frontier or learn more about the project, you can visit www.thefrontierfilm.com.

You can find out more about The Coastal Frontier at www.coastalfrontier.com and his short film, Terrebonne, at www.terrebonnefilm.com. For interviews, additional photos, or general questions, please feel free to contact us at info @thefrontierfilm.com or jeremy@thefrontierfilm.com.