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EXT.
AFOBAKA DAM
Title
over: “AFOBAKA DAM”
The huge
hydro-electric dam in the jungle is half-completed. Coffer dams divert the river temporarily
around it during construction of the main dam. It is an enormous complex. Yellow Volkswagons
with large black numbers on the door are parked on the side.
Workers
at the dam wear white helmets with black lettering, “Suralco.” The White engineers wear short-sleeved
white shirts with black lettering on the back: the top line reads “Suralco”; larger lettering underneath reads
“ALCOA.” The Black workers wear
khaki shirts.
The
workers appear well organized, busy at the various jobs of earth moving,
etc.
EXT.
RIVERBANK
Closer
to the dam, standing at the river's edge, KYLI, a 25-year old Black Saramaka native, watches the workers balefully. The rising water laps at his bare toes.
EXT. DAM
The
engineers read the plans and gesture to the Saramakan
laborers to pour the concrete. The
sound of the machinery rises to a CRESCENDO, leading to…
EXT. NEW ENGLAND COUNTRY ROAD
- NIGHT
…the
ROAR of car motors before they are seen on the road, approaching from a
distance. Finally, a black '60 Ford
hurtles down the road with four cars in hot pursuit.
Title
over: “JULY, 1963 - MASSACHUSETTS,
UNITED STATES”
________________________________________________________________________________
Synopsis
In 1962,
Alcoa manufactures the first pull-tab aluminum can—the breweries love it
and a transformative new industry is launched. Because the process demands intensive
mining and massive electricity for smelting the ore, Alcoa turns to Suralco (its mining subsidiary in Suriname, South America) to build a
hydro-electric dam across the Suriname River.
The people and animals inhabiting the 900 square-mile jungle area are not a
consideration.
Behind
the Afobaka Dam, the water forms a vast spreading
lake. Many native villages are
submerging; thousands of animals are in peril. Although Commissioner Jan Michels oversees the woeful relocation of 6,000 Saramakas out of the flooded area, he can do nothing
for the trapped animals who will surely die. In 1964, Michels
pleas for assistance from the International Society for the Protection of
Animals (ISPA) in Boston,
Massachusetts. “Time is
short,” he writes, “and the water rises.”
ISPA
dispatches 23-year-old John Walsh to conduct this unprecedented
animal-rescue effort in the most difficult tropical terrain. Walsh has
never been out of New England. He has never caught jungle animals. He has never managed a project. The question is not so much whether he
will save the animals, but whether he will survive at all. Yet the animals are dying and there is no
one else to send and no time to train anyone else.
This
screenplay is the story of that true adventure—how Walsh lives for two
years in the bush with his team of Saramakas, forging friendships with his foreman (Wimpy)
and assistant (Sime), and how together, racing
against time and against all odds, they save nearly 10,000 animals from
drowning and starvation.
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