Steve Rowell
Planetary Bayou
2023-25 TBD
Planetary Bayou is a film about a slow-moving, shallow, muddy creek in Texas that has changed the course of life on Earth, as it has mutated during its flow through the most concentrated petrochemical complex in the world.
Seen as a built environment, Houston is a chaotic and confounding metroplex. What makes it so compelling as a subject of inquiry is its singular status as the petrochemical capital of the world and the planetary impact of its fossil fuel manufacturing. By extension, this city affects all life on Earth today and every imaginable tomorrow.
Planetary Bayou examines the historical and contemporary landscape of the Buffalo Bayou, a waterway that originates as a drainage ditch in the countryside and extends through Houston to the Gulf of Mexico. Along its course, the bayou transitions from a modest channel to a major industrial shipping canal lined with petrochemical facilities, before reaching offshore pipelines that stretch for hundreds of miles across the sea floor.
The film documents the bayou’s widening, channelization, and intermittent rewilding, as well as its role as a critical conduit for global industry. The waterway passes through two bays before entering the Gulf, where industrial and ecological systems converge in complex and consequential ways.
Using a combination of aerial and ground-based cinematography, historical and contemporary documentation, and layered narration (delivered through voiceover, intertitles, and captions), Planetary Bayou presents a detailed portrait of the waterway. The narrative moves across multiple temporal and geographic scales, situating the Buffalo Bayou within broader systems of energy, infrastructure, and environmental change.
This is not simply a film about a single city or channel; it frames the bayou as a site where ecosystems, industrial capitalism, and planetary processes intersect.
More information soon.
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