One Sentence Movie Reviews: “FLOW: For Love of Water”
FLOW: For Love of Water (2008): "There has never been a more appropriate movie to drink a glass of water while watching and thank G-d you still could."
Notes: A documentary on fragile state of the world’s fresh water supply and how it will be as precious, politicized and killed for as oil is now. Some of this I knew already from reading the book Blue Gold which focuses on attempts by large water bottlers like Nestle and Vivendi to buy up water rights in communities around the world and charge the citizenry on a "per serving" basis to get access to their own rivers and lakes. But the footage of large dam construction, often funded by the World Bank, knocked me on my ear. Seems that the World Bank is a single largest funder of giant dam-building projects, many of which render hundreds and thousands of people homeless and put whole cities and towns underwater, in the name of getting water to those who need it.
Seems a compelling reason if that’s the only way to distribute water. But it isn’t. Organizations like Charity:Water can build a well to serve an entire community for around $4000. Innovative technology like playpumps create both playground equipment and aqua-self sustainability for nearly 2 million children.
My understanding is that getting poor communities the water they need via giant damn projects and privatization is like sending an army to give a kid a spanking. If wells are cheap, if citizens can manage them themselves, the problem seems to be political will and capital for thousands of small solutions not multi-large ones that steamroll the populations they claim to help.
Flow is produced by the Beastie Boys company Oscilloscope Laboratories which has its hands in a number of strong documentaries this year. I’ve already got Frontrunners and Dear Zachary (both of which played at the San Francisco Film Festival in April) in my Netflix queue for when they hit the streets.
See this movie. It’s more than worth it.