At the Death House Door
Screened Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Synopsis
In King Crawfish we watch the Cajun spirit pour out on a communal table, even as the wild harvest is diminishing. At the 50-year old Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival we see everything Cajuns value take to the stage: their language, music, food, dance, and crawfish. Thousands, and thousands of pounds of the humble mudbug get served up at the festival, most coming from their natural habitat, the Atchafalaya Basin. But in one small fishing community in the Basin, crawfishermen fight to retain their way of life.
If the crawfishermen fail to preserve their right to fish and to bring back the free-flowing water that the Basin’s wildlife needs to survive, we could be witnessing the last generation of wild harvest crawfishermen, and the loss of the largest swamp in the United States.
