Cucalorus Film Festival* is showing the feature documentary The Smell of Money on Thursday, November 17th at 7pm in Thalian Black. Following the film, guests will be invited to move into City Council Chambers for an hour-long discussion of the film featuring NC Environmental Justice Network’s Naeema Mohammad, Cape Fear River Watch’s Kemp Burdette, and filmmaker Shawn Bannon. The discussion will be moderated by Erin Carey, Director of Coastal Programs at North Carolina Sierra Club. 

Please purchase tickets in advance to reserve your spot! After tax, tickets cost about $25 if you are not a Cucalorus pass holder. You can purchase your tickets here.

About the film:

The Smell of Money is an 84-minute feature documentary from award-winning filmmaker Shawn Bannon. The Smell of Money‘s international premiere was at Hot Docs in Toronto, Canada where it received the Top 5 Audience Award and the film recently won the Best Life & Liberty Film at Sidewalk Film Festival. 

When a corporate hog farm moves in––uninvited––on land her grandfather had purchased after claiming his freedom from slavery, Elsie Herring decides to fight back. But as her rural community becomes the epicenter of the pork industry’s explosion in America, Elsie’s struggle to save her family’s home and heritage becomes a battle against one of the world’s most powerful companies and its deadly pollution. After decades of defeat, Elsie, her neighbors, and a gutsy small-town lawyer take the world’s largest pork company to court. The residents risk everything for their rights to clean air, pure water, and a life free from the stench of shit. A story about the power of love for one’s family and community to triumph over colossal forces of injustice, The Smell of Money calls upon viewers to see the people behind what’s on our plates––and to join the fight for a better future for us all.

About the panelists:

Naeema Mohammad has been Organizing Co-Director with NCEJN since 2013 and now serves as Senior Advisor.  She has worked on two NIEHS funded grants. The first was Community Health and Environmental Reawakening (CHER) in which she served as a community organizer working with communities dealing with waste from industrial hog operations. In this position, she worked with the late Dr. Steve Wing, a founding member of NCEJN and Associate Professor at UNC Gillngs School of Public Health, and was supervised by Gary Grant, Executive Director of Concerned Citizens of Tillery. She has co-authored publications with Dr. Wing regarding community based participatory research (most recently in the New Solutions Health Journal). She also serves on the NC Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) Secretary’s Environmental Justice & Equity Advisory Board.

Kemp Burdette is the Cape Fear Riverkeeper and he works to protect and improve the water quality of the Lower Cape Fear River. He is a Wilmington native who grew up exploring the waterways and swamps that make our area so special. Kemp has lived and traveled around the world as a US Navy search and rescue swimmer, a Fulbright Scholar, and a Peace Corps volunteer. At home and abroad Kemp has always been interested in the way humans interact with their environment.His academic background is in geology and history, graduating from UNCW magna cum laude with honors, and he holds a Master of Public Administration (MPA), also from UNCW. He also holds a certificate in nonprofit management from Duke University.

Shawn Bannon is an award-winning filmmaker whose films have screened at the Sundance Film Festival, AFI FEST, Hot Docs, and they’ve been featured on The Atlantic, Forbes, and BBC America. His short films, Hurricane Heroes, Bloody Barbara and A Ghost Story – 10 Pages, have all been selected for Vimeo Staff Picks. His recent film The Green Knight Documentary was made for A24 and premiered on iTunes. The Smell of Money is his first feature documentary, it premiered at Sarasota Film Festival in April 2022 where it won the Documentary Feature Jury Prize.

*”The Cucalorus Film Festival takes place in Wilmington, North Carolina every November for five days of new indie films, paired with bold performances and deep discussions about justice and the future. Cucalorus brings together bold, emerging creatives to share stories that challenge us to look at the world in new ways.”