Barr Completes Wild Caught
(Story by Tiffany Aumann Edwards, UNCG Press Services)
Film Chronicling Small North Carolina Fishing Community
A small fishing town comes to grips with coastal
growth and globalization in a new documentary, Wild Caught: The
Life and Struggles of an American Fishing Town, directed by Matthew
Barr of The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Wild Caught
was premiered in Elliott University Center Auditorium on the UNCG
campus at 7 p.m. April 29 to a large and appreciative audience,
including many of the fishermen and their family members shown
in the fill. The film was introduced by Dr. Loren Schweninger
of the UNCG Department of History.
The town of Snead’s Ferry, located on the New
River about forty miles north of Wilmington, has relied on the
fishing industry for the past three hundred years. Today the community’s
tradition is suffering. Real estate taxes and fuel prices have
skyrocketed. Imported seafood, which constitutes seventy percent
of the seafood sold in America today, is giving small-scale fishermen
serious competition. In addition, young people are not entering
the family fishing businesses due to the cost and dangers of being
a fisherman.
Nearly seven years ago, Barr, an Associate Professor in the Department
of Broadcasting and Cinema, set out to document this way of life
that is disappearing. "This film is about more than fishing. It
is about family, community, spirituality, life itself. These people
have a connection to the natural world that most of us don’t have."
Fishermen must not only be in tune with the sea, they must be
physically fit, knowledgeable mechanics, and insightful weathermen.
Their jobs become intimately connected to their personal lives.
Local fisherman Mack Liverman lost two ships beneath him. Rev.
John Norris, a shrimper and Pentecostal minister, weaves the philosophy
of a fisherman into his sermons.
Throughout
the ninety-minute documentary, viewers meet not only fishermen,
but also others in the town whose survival revolves around the
sea--net makers, crab pot makers, those who sell fishing tackle.
In addition, Barr interviews experts Dr. B. J. Copeland, marine
biologist emeritus from North Carolina State University, and Dr.
David Griffith, anthropologist from East Carolina University.
Barr said the small size of the town--approximately 2,200 residents--made
building trust essential to capturing a realistic portrait of
Snead’s Ferry. "There are some negative stereotypes about commercial
fishermen. There were some concerns if I’d be even-handed," Barr
said. "These fishermen are practicing sustainable, small-scale
fishing, but unfortunately in the mind’s eye of the public, they’re
grouped together with large-scale, trawler operations." He invested
a significant amount of time in getting to know the residents
(with extensive filming over a six-year period).
Barr plans to enter the film in film festivals around the country
next year as well as screen it for interested legislators and
advocacy groups. He has started a nonprofit, the Unheard
Voices Project, to continue to make films about working
class people. His last film, Carnival Train, explored the lives
of carnival workers. For more information, call (336) 334-3887.
Wild Caught was funded by grants from Sea-Grant, the North Carolina
Arts Council, and UNCG.
