Let’s Talk About Water film festival
“Let’s Talk About Water” Film Festival
For those concerned about “boil warnings” in Athens County, toxic sludge and rust-colored streams, the “Let’s Talk About Water” film event at the Athena Cinema provided some answers and even possible solutions. At the least, the Cinematheque series generated curiosity and awareness about our local watersheds. This series was possible with the help of guest curator Linda Lilienfeld.
Working as a picture and film researcher for the last 35 years, Lilienfeld has lent her expertise to PBS documentaries, feature films like Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors, museum exhibits and books.
letstalkaboutwater.com
The Brooklyn native’s love affair with water issues began in 1992 when she worked on a museum exhibit about global warming. She was alarmed that despite the subject’s gravity, people didn’t seem to show concern. The problem, she realized, was not apathy but confusion because audiences simply could not understand the material.
To make global warming accessible to non-scientists, Lilienfeld’s initiated the Watershed Media Project, which she envisioned as a four-part film series on watersheds. It was similar to other projects she had worked on, such as an eight-part series on the brain. “Water was a great entry point into this big subject of global warming because it knit everything together like soil science, atmospheric science and hydrology. You could also look at it from a very personal perspective by putting it in a watershed context. A watershed is a physical boundary where you have upstream and downstream, and everybody lives downstream of someone,” Lilienfeld said.
She decided to apply for a $6 million grant from the National Science Foundation to fund the series, and brought together a team of academics, scientists and producers. In spite of working on the project for 10 years and applying for the grant twice, Lilienfeld was unable to secure funding. “Bush was president at the time and people were overwhelmed about dealing with the issue of watersheds because it challenged local, state and federal politics,” she said.
The project disbanded, but Lilienfeld refused to give up her efforts to bridge the gap between scientists and the lay audiences they needed to reach. By 2002, she collected over 300 films on water issues and developed connections with the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc (CUAHSI). Working with Rick Hooper, CUAHSI’s executive director, Lilienfeld developed three short films about water, which were eventually shown at the World Water Forum in Mexico as part of the International Water and Film Event. The event, which included panels of people dealing with water problems around the world, advocated adding a new article to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Currently, the United Nations does not recognize the right to access clean and potable water as a fundamental human right.
Last year, Lilienfeld decided to replicate the International Water and Film Event at the local level by coupling internationally and locally produced films with panels of local experts. In Athens, she worked with Ruth Bradley, manager of the Athena Cinema, to put together the program centered on activism. Lilienfeld provided educational documentaries like Flow, while Bradley augmented the program with avant-garde films like 13 Lakes. The program also included regional films about the impacts of mining in Appalachian communities and the Sunday Creek Watershed.
For Lilienfeld, films that marry art and science to create a visually appealing product can “have a great impact on people’s lives and policy decisions.” These films and other media play an important role in activism, especially if they mine information produced at scientific conferences, Lilienfeld said. Scientists sometime couple their data with photography and generate beautiful images from the data which the general public never sees. Media makers can use these images and data to reach out to diverse audiences, she said.
For the closing panel discussion, which also touched on media outreach and activism, Lilienfeld included academics from environmental science, geography and journalism, EPA representatives, politicians and public health workers. While the conversation ranged from the best use of resources to holding local politicians accountable, panelists and audience members agreed that using media to educate youth is key to solving environmental crises. Darwin Mendoza, an audiovisual artist, noted that media makers must pay attention to language and distribution. “Younger people use a completely different language,” he said and they must be reached through new channels of distribution such as videos designed for cell phones and Youtube. Ultimately, media must avoid the approach taken by the television program series Race to Save the Planet, Lilienfeld said. “Audiences referred to the show as the ‘Oh God, oh well’ show because they felt that problems were so large to take on that the only thing they could do was turn off the TV.”
