For Love of Water

Award-winning documentary to screen in Traverse City
By Holly Wren Spaulding
Sun contributor

We are speeding through the Orange Free State in South Africa. The sky here is as black as any sky I’ve seen—inky dark and throbbing with stars. Tall grasses bend in the wind on either side of a narrow and mostly empty highway. After many long days of filming, our little crew of six is jubilant while we sing along with Manu Chao at top volume.

Lawrence, our gallant Zulu driver, stops the van and we spill onto the road dancing in the beams cast from the headlights. We’ve been witness to unbearable poverty and the worst kind of government neglect. We’ve been to the townships around Johannesburg and are now convinced that to be denied basic services is a kind of violence that cannot be tolerated. But tonight we are contradicting the weight of this knowledge. Perhaps we can at last laugh and spin with each other because we recognized, deeply, that what we were doing—documenting these truths—was an appropriate response.

We have resolved to make a film about the water challenges that face the planet. We’ve been to Japan, and will eventually film in India, Bolivia and northern Michigan. At this moment we are digesting what it means when tens of thousands of people who are too poor to pay rising water rates either go without—or organize in defense of “water as a right”.

We’ve filmed “struggle plumbers” reconnecting water services when someone is “cut-off” because it is the decent, humanitarian thing to do. We’ve witnessed the miles that rural women walk to gather water for their families. We’ve also attended international summits where water ministers and heads of global corporations speculate on the value of water in economic and national security terms. We have considered the countless articles and research papers and books warning that the wars of the 21st century will be fought over “blue gold”.
FLOW director, Irena Salina, says that the idea to make this film started when her daughter was born and she began thinking about the future in a new way. Other members of the crew grew passionate as we worked.

In my case, the determination to make media about the threats to our water go back to my days of organizing with other Sweetwater activists to stop the diversion of Michigan’s water by the Nestle Corporation (bottlers of the Ice Mountain brand). Linked with this were my efforts during the late 1990s to educate myself and other student activists on the threat that international trade agreements (WTO, NAFTA, FTAA) pose to sovereignty, common resources, as well as just about any organizing principal apart from the profit motive.
More accurately, my inspiration must be that I’ve lived most of my life in proximity to 20 percent of the earth’s surface fresh water. My affection for it—my sense of allegiance—is native. While I have not always expressed these values consciously, they are what have motivated my work on this film.
As journalists, storytellers and artists of different kinds, our goal, as I understood it, was to stir reflection and critical thinking. We wanted to believe that given the chance to do so, many others could be summoned to care about our shared planet. Along the way we found tales of injustice and peril, but also of collection action that resulted in solutions, success and community empowerment.

I am a poet. I am an activist, and at times I’ve even been a “community organizer”. My ambition, in all that I do, is to regain and maintain my closeness to the heart of beauty. In my definition of beauty there is justice and decency—a spirit of fellow feeling.

It’s mid-February and I’ve brought Irena, camera in tow, to shoot B-roll on the shore of Lake Michigan. Bitter gusts lash at our faces. Even the sand is icy and yet the water remains dumbfounding in its beauty. A native of France, Irena had never been to the Great Lakes.

Another recent visitor from abroad had looked at this same view and said, “If you told me this was the sea I would believe you,” so awesome is the expanse of water in front of us. We didn’t talk much but instead thought to ourselves “this is why we are making this film.”

There were many moments like this one during the five years FLOW was in production. Much of that time Irena worked alone; at other times the team swelled with other passionate and talented people. For a couple of those years I researched, traveled, perplexed, and worked in every way I could, while we did our best to track down stories essential to the film. This included the story of the David and Goliath battled being waged by here in Michigan.

Last January, FLOW premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, thus beginning its tour around the world. Most recently, it won the award for “Best Documentary” at the United Nations Film Festival. We look forward to screening it for audiences here in Michigan in mid-November and expect that many locals will enjoy finding themselves in the footage.

FLOW will be shown on Nov. 16th at 3 p.m. at The State Theatre in Traverse City. A reception will follow with the director, former Governor Bill Milliken and his wife Helen, Dave Dempsey, author of Great Lakes for Sale, Terry Swier of Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation, and environmental attorney James Olson (City Opera House). Advance tickets are recommended: visit www.cityoperahouse.org or call (231) 941-8082.
For information on the film, visit www.flowthefilm.com.