Screening of Conni Castille’s “King Crawfish” and Talk with Filmmaker

Come see behind the scenes of the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival. Meet Byron Blanchard and Mark Bernard who represent the 30 or so board members who put on the Crawfish Festival. As we trace the mudbug to its wild habitat, we meet Jody Meche and Mike Bienvenu to witness traditional crawfish practices and learn about their challenges and that of the largest swamp in the nation.

In King Crawfish we watch the Cajun spirit being poured 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 of pounds of crawfish 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.