Everywhere you look in Southern Louisiana (SoLa) there’s water – bayous, swamps, the Mississippi River, the Gulf of Mexico. And everyone in Cajun Country has a water story, or two or three. When filmmaker Jon Bowermaster arrived in Louisiana in July 2008 to make a film about the relationship between man and water, he never expected that the reportage would end with the planet’s biggest ecologic disaster – the BP oil spill polluting the Gulf of Mexico.

Watching “SoLa,” one realizes just how vital these vast expansions of water are, not just to the local fishermen who rely on them to make a living, but to the county as a whole due to the enormous awry of wildlife that make Louisiana their home. The waterways are home to the biggest economies in Louisiana — a $70 billion a year oil and gas industry and a $200 million a year fishing business. Both are in the midst of sizable changes. Man's obsession with oil and gas are increasingly becoming a serious threat to the entire area.

“SoLa” is a beautifully filmed and thoughtfully handled. (Jacob Brades)

JON BOWERMASTER
Writer, Filmmaker and Adventurer

A six-time grantee of the National Geographic Expeditions Council, his 2007-2008 Antarctic expedition was the final in his OCEANS 8 project, which over the past decade has taken him and his teams around the world by sea kayak, including expeditions to the Aleutian Islands, Vietnam, French Polynesia, Chile/Argentina/Bolivia, Gabon, Croatia and Tasmania. Seeing the world from the seat of a sea kayak over the past decade has given Bowermaster a one-of-a-kind look at both the health of the world's oceans and the lives of the nearly 3 billion people around the globe who depend on them.

His reporting on the relationship between man and the sea continues, with new films on the Galapagos, Louisiana and the Maldives in-production. His blog – “Notes From Sea Level” - gives him a daily forum for continuing the conversation with a growing audience.

Author of ten books (his most recent, "Descending the Dragon" about his travels in Vietnam was published in August by National Geographic Books & “Wildebeest in a Rainstorm” published by Menasha Ridge) and producer of a dozen documentary films, when not on the sea Bowermaster lives in Stone Ridge, NY.

Cast/Featuring: Wilma Subra, Dean Wilson Ivor Van Heerden, Mary Lou Orr, Tracy Kuhns, Paul templet
Executive Producer(s): Mark Terk
Producer(s): Jon Bowermaster
Director(s): Jon Bowermaster
Screenwriter(s): Jon Bowermaster, Chris Cavanagh
Cinematographer(s): Jefferson Miller, Brian C. Miller Richard
Editor(s): Chris Cavanagh
Composer(s)/Music: Roddie Romero and Hub City All Stars
Sound Editor(s): Jacques Boulanger