'Lucy Raven: Pressure & Release' New Art21 Film to Premiere Online on September 17

23 September 2025

On 17 September, Art 21 announced the release of 'Lucy Raven: Pressure & Release', a new documentary film that captures the artist as she travels to Oregon and California documenting the removal of one of four dams on the Klamath River for Murderers Bar (2025), the final film in Raven’s The Drumfire (2020-2025) series. From a cement plant in Idaho to an explosives testing ground in New Mexico to a dam removal in California, The Drumfire critically reflects on the ideologies and industries that transform and deform the American West.

Murderers Bar documents the largest dam removal in the history of the United States, the result of decades of effort by the Yurok Tribe, Karuk Tribe, Hoopa Valley Tribe, Klamath Tribes, Modoc Nation, and Shasta Indian Nation. Using helicopters, drones, underwater cameras, and animated sequences, Raven visualizes how the build-up and release of pressure transform both land and life.

“It wasn’t just dirt that was released,” says Raven. “It was actually a hundred years of this industrial exploitation of that region.”

Find out more via Art21.

Image: Production still from the Art21 "Extended Play" film, "Lucy Raven: Pressure & Release." © Art21, Inc. 2025.