A giant-screen documentary tracing some of the oldest living trees in eastern North America is opening to the public at Fernbank Museum of Natural History on November 14, following a premiere during the museum’s Fernbank After Dark event the night before. Titled American Amazon, the film is narrated by Louisiana native Jon Batiste and follows a University of Arkansas scientist’s search for the South’s oldest wetland trees, including a bald cypress documented at more than 2,600 years old.
A Film Years in the Making
According to WABE, writer-director Eric Bendick and National Geographic photographer Mac Stone spent four years following the rivers, swamps and springs of the Southeast while making the film. Bendick, who also produced American Amazon, told WABE the region’s natural places are often close to home yet overlooked, and said the South deserves to better celebrate its own biodiversity. He described the wetlands and waterways captured on screen as precious places that deserve wider recognition.
The film is produced by Grizzly Creek Films and PBS Nature, in association with Common Pictures, the WNET Group and MacGillivray Freeman Films, according to the production company’s own project page. It journeys across Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and the Carolinas, and was slated to begin appearing in select IMAX and giant-screen theaters and museums beginning Friday, per a MacGillivray Freeman Films press release. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution separately reported the film would premiere during Fernbank After Dark.
Batiste’s Louisiana Ties
Bendick told WABE that Batiste was very interested in the project and in developing work about conservation in Louisiana’s swamps, a connection that fits Batiste’s own roots in the state. Fernbank visitors can catch the film as part of general admission, subject to availability, per the museum’s listing.
American Amazon is also scheduled for a two-part Nature miniseries on PBS in early 2027, WABE reported. Thomas Winston is credited as a producer on the project, according to the same report.
Chasing a 2,600-Year-Old Tree
Central to the film is David Stahle, a University of Arkansas geosciences professor who studies tree rings. WABE reports the documentary follows Stahle in his search for the South’s oldest wetland trees. His work connects to a 2017 discovery along North Carolina’s Black River, south of Raleigh, where Stahle and colleagues documented a stand of bald cypresses that are the oldest known living trees in eastern North America, according to University of Arkansas News. One of those trees was found to be at least 2,624 years old.
Photographer Mac Stone, who grew up in Gainesville, Florida, photographed the Black River cypresses for the project, per WABE. Stone spent a little over two weeks photographing in Madagascar and the same amount of time photographing in Alabama, and he told WABE he was completely blown away by what Alabama had to offer.
A Local Conservationist’s Case for Small-Scale Action
Stone leads Naturaland Trust, a nonprofit that buys land and rivers for permanent protection in South Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains and Piedmont region, WABE reported. He recommended focusing hyper-locally in response to global environmental problems, telling the outlet that places people love need allies and advocates, and that stories connect people across landscapes. Stone is also the author of the book American Amazon: Ancient Forests and Living Waters of the Wild Southeastern US, published by teNeues.
The film’s title echoes a phrase that Alabama-born biologist E.O. Wilson, known as the father of biodiversity, began using years ago. Bendick told WABE he first heard the term “American Amazon” from Wilson about 15 years earlier, and that people across the South have since come to compare the region to the Amazon itself.
The Stakes Beneath the Surface
The film’s backdrop is a region whose waterways rank among the most biologically rich, and most threatened, in the country. A 2017 survey by the University of Georgia River Basin Center and the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute, covering the distribution of more than 1,000 fish, crayfish and mussel species across nearly 300 watersheds in 11 states, found that more than 1,400 aquatic species live within 500 miles of Chattanooga, including roughly three-quarters of all native U.S. fish species and more than 90 percent of the nation’s mussel and crayfish species, according to ScienceDaily. That same survey reported that 28 percent of Southeastern fish species were considered imperiled, more than double the rate from 20 years earlier.
Planning a Visit
Beyond the film, Fernbank has scheduled Stone himself to appear Sunday, November 15, from 5:15 to 6:15 p.m. for a lecture titled American Amazon: Photographing the Wildest Secrets of the American South, according to the museum’s calendar of events. The talk is followed by a question-and-answer session with Stone and Bendick. Admission to the lecture is free, but reservations are required online or by calling 404-929-6400, and the lecture ticket does not include museum or film admission.
