Alumni Documentaries Nominated for Wolper Award

Documentaries by N’Jeri Eaton, Matt Durning and Bagassi Koura (MJ ’10) have been nominated for the Student Documentary Award.

The Stinking Ship by Bagassi Koura is a groundbreaking documentary that chronicles the humanitarian catastrophe that occurred after a Swiss-based oil and commodity shipping company unloaded its cargo of toxic waste in the middle of the largest city in Cote d’Ivoire, causing one of the worst environmental crises of the last decade.

Perry County by Matt Durning and N’Jeri Eaton is a half-hour film documenting the controversial decision to dump millions of tons of coal ash waste from the 2008 spill in Kingston, Tennessee, at a landfill in this poor, disenfranchised, predominantly black county in central Alabama. The short-term economic benefits of the coal ash are clear: more than $4 million dollars in dumping fees and 80 new temporary jobs in a region desperate for industry.

To learn more, please visit the International Documentary Association website.