2008, USA
Crime, Documentary
Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink. In the documentary FLOW: For Love of Water, director Irena Salina tackles the big problem that few acknowledge: clean water is not a specialized quandary in a distant desert, it is a global problem for all cultures.
Maude Barlow, author of Blue Gold: The Battle against Corporate Theft of the World's Water, labels companies such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Nestle as "water hunters." Another scientist predicts future wars will not be held over oil, but over water. As a basic resource becomes controlled and polluted by billion dollar corporations, the general public discovers an uphill battle for healthy living.
I will be so bold to blow the ending of this film. The filmmakers behind Flow have created a petition to add one more article to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights -- that of the Right to Water. Is this really necessary? Do we need another film like An Inconvenient Truth to foretell the death and destruction that will happen if we do not make amends to Mother Earth?
Yes.
The film lays bare the facts. 70 percent of both Earth and human bodies are composed of water. Two million die each year from waterborne diseases (though oddly the United States does not keep such records). Do the math, and it becomes obvious that changes need to be made. Too bad the necessary modifications are not being made by those in charge. Instead, it is up to the communities affected to make their voices heard and their demands met.
Flow witnesses blood and sewage flowing into Lake Titicaca, South Africans being literally locked out of water pump access, Indians forced to drink biologically contaminated water and Michigan farms sinking from a greedy corporation assuming water rights. And if the blatant pollution and crime were not bad enough, how well do you know the source of that bottled water you are drinking? According to scientists interviewed in Flow, the world's clean water problem could be solved for less than what is spent on questionably unregulated bottled water.
How did a public resource which flows from land to land become so privatized? How did those who claim the water become so distant from the people who need access to it in order to survive? How have companies been allowed to pollute the surrounding land, creating a disconnect between the image of their products and the actions of their businesses?
Flow addresses these questions with intelligence from the scientists who know best and heart from the people who are affected. Hopefully the film will cause audiences to hold companies accountable and to think twice about the liquid lifeblood we often take for granted.
Sign the petition
Article 31: Everyone has the right to clean and accessible water, adequate for the health and well-being of the individual and family, and no one shall be deprived of such access or quality of water due to individual economic circumstance.