Producer of Award-Winning Socio-Environmental Documentary Visits Campus

April 15, 2013

On Friday, April 12, 2013, the award-winning socio-environmental documentary MY VILLAGE, MY LOBSTER was screened for free at the UNM Student Union Building (SUB) Theater. Writer/producer Brad Allgood attended for a question and answer session following the screening. The event was sponsored by the Latin American & Iberian Institute, Department of Economics, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy at UNM, Nourish International, and Peace Corps. Read more about the event in a recent UNM Today article.

MY VILLAGE, MY LOBSTER is the powerful and shocking story of the indigenous Miskito lobster divers along Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast who risk their lives diving for the region's most lucrative resource - the Caribbean spiny lobster. Over the past 20 years, hundreds of Miskito divers have died and thousands of have become paralyzed from decompression sickness, a diving-related condition commonly known as the bends. Through the voices of Miskito lobster divers and their families, as well as boat owners, captains, and doctors, MY VILLAGE, MY LOBSTER tells the story of an industry and a community in crisis.

Writer/producer Allgood is an independent producer, cinematographer and editor for film and television with a diverse background in the biological and physical sciences as well as international development, renewable energy, Latin American affairs and public health. He served for three and a half years in the Peace Corps in Nicaragua during which he discovered his passion for film and television through his work on a youth HIV/AIDS television project.Since transitioning to documentary filmmaking, he has produced, filmed and/or edited many award-winning independent productions both domestically and internationally, including the PBS program EcoViews: Three Stories from the Chesapeake Bay, a National Finalist for the 2010 Student Academy Awards and CINE Golden Eagle Winner; Saving the Seaflower Conch, an Honorable Mention in the 2010 BLUE Ocean Film Festival; The Road We Know, a feature-length film about youth efforts to combat HIV/AIDS in Botswana; Waiting for Oil, a half-hour documentary about the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill and Winner of Best Documentary and Best Cinematography at the 2011 Visions Film Fest; and 120 Days, a feature-length observational documentary about an illegal Mexican immigrant's last days in the United States with his family.