On March 8, U of T’s Cinema Studies program hosted the Embodying Water film festival at the Innis Town Hall. 

The festival was presented by students of a U of T Cinema Studies seminar class called Sensory Ecologies: Theory and Praxis in Environmental Media Studies, taught by Assistant Professor Nadine Chan of the Cinema Studies Institute. The film festival screened five short films of various genres from around the world, each about the central theme of water. 

Threats to our water’s future

The festival was produced by Water Docs, a Canadian charity that hosts educational programs about water and a sustainable future. 

“Our water is in danger and in turn… threatens all of the life that it flows through and upholds,” explained Aydan Dougall, a fourth-year student studying cinema and philosophy and the co-host of the festival, in her opening remarks. 

Although clean drinking water is available for most Canadians, 33 Indigenous communities are still under long-term drinking water advisories — warnings issued by the federal government and First Nations communities that the drinking water is unsafe. Long-term advisories are any warnings that have been in place for longer than a year. Some communities such as the Neskantaga First Nation have had these advisories in place for more than 30 years. 

According to the World Resources Institute, about 25 countries — home to 25 per cent of the global population — face extremely high water stress each year. Water stress occurs when demand exceeds the available amount of water, or when poor water quality restricts its use, causing deterioration to the quantity and quality of freshwater resources.

The ongoing climate crisis poses an unprecedented risk to global water and food reserves as ecological destruction, extreme weather events, and increases in global temperatures disrupt the world’s water systems. 

Dougall said that Embodying Water aimed to “[honour]… this resource right now by celebrating and engaging with water through creative human depictions of it, telling its stories… through film,” to “foster the awareness necessary to protect and improve our water resources for the entire planet.”

Finding the narrative current

The first film showcased was director Persia Beheshti’s Wetlands (2020), a short documentary about the mermaid subculture in the US. Beyond the US, however, mermaid subculture — where people of all shapes, sizes, genders, and creeds, enjoy dressing up as mermaids — is spreading its ripples around the world; and over the years, has become a space for transgender people to express and embrace themselves. The glamorous colours of the mermaid costumes and makeup, the ancestral and mythical storytelling, and the shimmering glow of the pool water in Wetlands combine to create a surreal commentary on the mermaid subculture.

Benjamin Fieschi-Rose and Kristen Brass’s The Lost Seahorse (2021) is a stop-motion animation about a white seahorse lost in the depths of the ocean who must navigate an ever-changing marine environment disrupted by human activities. Despite its short 11-minute runtime, you can’t help but wish the world for this clay seahorse. The colourful ocean-bed and its diverse inhabitants remind us that the water belongs to all, including animals. 

Moe Clark, Victoria Hunt, and James Brown’s Biolumin (2020) is an abstract underwater spectacle, whose unconventional and experimental styling reminds the viewer of just how little we understand water and the ocean. The film is an international collaboration between Clark — a Metis sound designer and vocalist — and Hunt, a Maori choreographer. The refractory and mirrored visuals pose powerful questions about our relationship with space, time, and water. 

My favourite film of the festival was Violeta Paus’s Water Silhouettes, a haunting documentary about women in Chile’s ‘Sacrifice Zones’ — regions designated by the government that are subject to high pollution from industrialization and whose residents face illness, and social and economic marginalization as a result. Paus juxtaposes well-crafted shots of pollution, industry, and nature, which are intertwined and symbiotic in these zones. The Chilean women explain their precarious relationship to water, the landscape, and pollution, to capture a devastating snapshot of lives and ecology sacrificed in the name of economic growth.

The screenings closed with Alkis Papastathopoulos and Kate Adams’ short film One Day We Will Dance With You. Set in a scenic lakeside field, the film follows two dancers preparing a community performance that embodies water. Unfortunately, in my opinion, this film was the weakest of the selections, with its light-hearted tone especially jarring on the back of the emotional and powerful Water Silhouettes.

In the Q and A session following the festival, The Lost Seahorse director Brass shared a question about her film’s production with the audience: “How do we make [telling a story about the ocean] interesting and also leave audiences… without feeling so dreadful, giving people the feeling of hope in the end?” 

However, despite the emphasis of these films on instilling hope, I walked away from the Embodying Water Film Festival feeling pessimistic — the films that moved me the most were the ones that filled me with dread. There is simply too much left to do, and the cinematic portrayal of the human capacity for destruction and the twisted beauty I felt was more powerful than any message of hope.