Land of Destiny

(2010)

Written and Directed by Brett Story

This evening, I went to see this documentary as part of the Mayworks – Festival of Working People and the Arts (see them here)

Here’s the trailer:

The film presents members of the Sarnia, Ontario, community with a focus on occupational health. Many of the townspeople work in Petrochemical plants where they were or continue to be exposed to toxicities, causing a number of health issues (such as cancerous, respiratory)

What is fascinating about this film is how it seems to depict the people, despite her early expectations of this project as a political environmentalism documentary, she enables them to tell their own tales, which elicits their feelings of the meaning of work and job on a much deeper level.

It uncovers something that has already brought up a couple times on this blog, of the triangle of sustainability that has a sometimes forgotten social element.

Even if, day by day, the work makes the workers sicker and sicker, they find themselves weighing the satisfaction of having a job and the sense of accomplishment it brings them.

And on the other side of this illness and these deaths, you also have the widows and widowers who are left alone and possibly with little or no income.

It was beautifully strewn together and highlights a really obvious occupational and environmental hazard that does not get the attention it deserves.

At some point in the commentary, after the film, Story said that she knows that industries like these are not the way of a sustainable future, but it does make you wonder what will come of whole towns and cities, revolving around such industries, if such major changes did come about.

Film Pic from Bunbury Films website, http://www.bunburyfilms.com/