The Dauphin Island Sea Lab Foundation invites you to the Alabama premiere of Diving Deep: The Life and Times of Mike deGruy. The premiere is a benefit for the Dauphin Island Sea Foundation. The Mobile native filmmaker and explorer is remembered in the film written, directed, and produced by his wife and filmmaking partner Mimi Armstrong deGruy.
Diving Deep is an award-winning feature-length documentary about the irrepressible biologist turned filmmaker, Mike deGruy, a man who lived with one foot in the sea and the other on land, who spent his life speaking on behalf of the ocean’s creatures. He was becoming increasingly outspoken as an environmental activist when he died tragically in a helicopter crash in Australia while filming for director James Cameron. The film celebrates his remarkable career but it also highlights what he believed passionately at the time of his death: we are destroying the ocean before we even know what’s there.
This is a story told through the eyes of deGruy’s wife. When she finally went back into their edit room after his death, Mimi deGruy found herself returning again and again to one piece of footage she’d never seen of her late husband. She realized it captured the moment he went from being an artistic filmmaker to an activist, and she knew she had to make a film.
After many years of filming in all the world’s oceans, Mike deGruy became curious and then passionate about exploring the deep sea, the least known part of the ocean. Then, when the Macondo oil spewed unabated into the deep water of the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, deGruy, like the rest of the world was appalled. He took the massive damage inflicted on the Gulf personally because this was where he’d grown up and first learned to love the ocean, and it was in the deep sea. DeGruy talked to and filmed multiple scientists while following the science of the spill. He was astonished they couldn’t tell him how that oil affected the Gulf because they had so little understanding of what was there before. While the oceans cover 70 percent of our earth’s surface, only 10 percent has been explored.
In honoring deGruy’s memory and the work he was so passionate about, Mimi deGruy creates a portrait that celebrates not only his joyous spirit and sense of adventure but also highlights the need to continue oceanic exploration.
With Mike deGruy’s breathtaking underwater cinematography, his topside storytelling, interviews with deGruy himself and those he worked with like Sir David Attenborough, Dr. Sylvia Earle, James Cameron, and others, Diving Deep tells the moving story of one man, as seen through the eyes of his wife.
Diving Deep makes the compelling case that we need to care for both the natural world and those we love most before we wake up and learn it is too late.
The Alabama premiere benefitting the Dauphin Island Sea Lab Foundation will be on Thursday, May 16 at the Arthur R. Outlaw Convention Center Ballroom. Doors open at 6 p.m. with the movie beginning at 6:30 p.m.
Ticket Information:
VIP reception 5:30-6:30 Tickets $50 (limited to the first 100)
Reception to meet the filmmaker, Mimi deGruy
General admission tickets $30 in advance and $35 at the door.
Proceeds from the event will go to the Dauphin Island Sea Lab Foundation to sustain the Mike deGruy Scholarship. To purchase tickets, click here. For more information please call 251-307-5903 or visit the website at sealabfoundation.org.
Diving Deep: The life and Times of Mike deGruy - Trailer from Diving Deep on Vimeo.