AFF 2010 Review: Shelter in Place
The long-suffering city of Port Arthur, Texas has a love-hate relationship with the oil industry. Without the industry's refinery jobs, Port Arthur probably would cease to exist, and its residents would be hard pressed to find other employment in a regional economy based almost entirely on petrochemicals. But Port Arthur residents also pay a high price for their reliance on oil, because the industry that sustains them also poisons many of them.
Shelter in Place is a poignant and often enraging look at Port Arthur's poorest residents, who see few benefits from the oil-based economy while suffering almost all of its consequences. The 48-minute-long documentary by British filmmaker Zed Nelson, which screened at Austin Film Festival in partnership with The Texas Observer, is the sort of angrily effective agit-prop film that every anti-regulatory, free-enterprise preaching Texas politician should see, but surely won't.
The film focuses on the hapless inhabitants of Carver Terrace, a decaying Port Arthur neighborhood surrounded by refineries. Carver Terrace often experiences "upsets," an industry term for the release of toxic chemicals such as benzene into the air to relieve pressure in refinery pipes and avoid potential disasters. Upsets can last for many hours and contribute heavily to air pollution, but despite their alarming frequency (there were 13,000 upsets in Texas in 2007 alone), they're perfectly legal in Texas as long as the refineries report them to state environmental regulators.
The term upsets is, of course, a typical industry euphemism meant to downplay their devastating effects on those who breathe the Texas coast's famously dirty air. The release of toxic chemicals is far more than merely upsetting; it can cause immediate respiratory problems and, because many of the chemicals are linked to cancer, can be lethal in the long term. Shelter in Place pulls no punches in portraying these effects, with its horror stories about people dying from cancer and gritty images of oil company employees wearing gas masks and young children who can't breathe without respirators.
Speaking of euphemisms, the film's title is yet another misleading bit of industry parlance. Shelter in Place means that during an upset, a person should seek shelter indoors or in a car immediately with all doors and windows tightly closed. This practice is effective only if you own a car or live in a house with properly sealed windows and doors, which is not the case for many poor people who live near refineries.
The film's most devastating jab at the oil industry is its description of how the industry callously deals with the victims of upsets: It pays them meager amounts of cash up front if they agree not to sue. A few hundred dollars is a small fortune to most of the refineries' impoverished neighbors, so most gladly take the money. They also know from experience that their chances of winning lawsuits against the oil industry are slim to none. Shelter in Place follows one such lawsuit against Valero Energy as it winds its way through the courts; to avoid a spoiler, I won't reveal the outcome.
As I said, Shelter in Place is devastatingly effective, if only because its subject matter is such a blatant example of environmental injustice. The film's grungy low-resolution visuals make Port Arthur appear as if it's been decaying since the day it was founded, and the interviews with squirmy Valero officials show us that even the industry's well-rehearsed PR flacks can't defend the industry's worst practices. My only major criticism of the film is that it overuses its relentlessly sad imagery to the point of being repetitive. Shelter in Place packs a visual wallop, but a few more industry-related facts and figures, along with a more in-depth examination of the lawsuit against Valero, would make it an even more powerful indictment against the oil industry.
Screening before Shelter in Place was Pink Chaddis, a short documentary by Austin director Sweta Vohra. In February 2009 in the southern Indian city of Mangalore, a group of men viciously attacked women in a pub for drinking and wearing Western clothes. Calling themselves Lord Ram's Army, the men considered such behavior improper for women and "un-Indian." The attack inspired a provocative protest in which Indian women sent more than 23,000 pairs of pink chaddis, or underwear, to the Lord Ram's Army leader. Pink Chaddis is an interesting and slickly produced look at gender and class issues in modern India, where Western culture often clashes with Hindu fundamentalism.