Director/Producer/Cinematographer: Daniel Green
In the heart of the Chesapeake Bay, Tangier Island’s fishing community faces the prospect of seeing rising seas consume their homeland. As the hurricane season looms, the personal journeys of two influential watermen mirror an intergenerational struggle to cope with impending environmental crisis.
(Password: NFTS2024)
We spent 2-months on Tangier Island - that is a director and myself. We lived in amongst a close-knit community, of no more than 300 people; we went to church, helped unload food deliveries at the dock and joined families for dinner (usually for crab). The island was only a mile long. Another mile had been erased by rising sea in the past century. This lost half of the island once was home to another 300-500 people, referred to as 'The Uppards'. Now all remains is marsh, and along the beach human bones can be found, disinterred from graveyards by the never relenting waves of the Chesapeake Bay. Many residents, especially elder members who once had houses on The Uppards, remember when it was a bustling community. Few talk about it in its present state, and many refused to visit. In the Uppards was held a warning; a glimpse into the future; a grim reminder of the struggle that these residents now face - complete erasure of their island by erosion and sea-level rise before 2050.
It is often said that the people of Tangier will be America's first climate change refugees.
