Progress, Pork-Barrel, and Pheasant Feathers
"This film is an intimate case study of pork barrel politics, framed within the on-going controversy over construction of the Florida Cross State Barge Canal by the US Army Corps of Engineers–a civil works project originally cooked up by President Henry Jackson, picked up and dropped by President Kennedy, and periodically re-visited by local groups with assorted vested interests. The Barge Canal was designed to shorten the oil-shipping route from Texas to New Jersey by cutting across the top of Florida, linking the Atlantic with the Pacific. The Oklawaha River, one of Florida’s last remaining wild rivers, was slated as primary water feed-source for the Canal. As a cinema verité depiction of a grass roots attempt to save the river from destruction, Progress, Pork-Barrel, and Pheasant Feathers is a story of profit pitted against beauty, made several years before the word “environment” was even in the political activist lexicon." - Holly Fisher
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GiantFilm, 1956Rated 7.6 on TMDB
Wealthy rancher Bick Benedict and dirt-poor cowboy Jett Rink both woo Leslie Lynnton, a beautiful young woman from Maryland who is new to Texas. She marries Benedict, but she is shocked by the racial bigotry of the White Texans against the local people of Mexican descent. Rink discovers oil on a small plot of land, and while he uses his vast, new wealth to buy all the land surrounding the Benedict ranch, the Benedict's disagreement over prejudice fuels conflict that runs across generations.
