Director: Kevin McMahon
109 minutes Country: Canada NR
Year: 2008 Language: English
Filmmaker Kevin McMahon and his camera crew set off to explore one of the world’s most pervasive but unsung heroes: water. An epic achievement, Waterlife succeeds in shedding light on an essential component of our daily lives.
Water, as we know, is one of the primary elements; not only do we need it to survive, but our bodies primarily consist of it. Water flows through us and around us, and as such, its journeys are very much our own. Waterlife follows water as it embarks on one of its many voyages across a specific geographical terrain, moving from North America’s Great Lakes toward the Atlantic Ocean, a vast territory whose environs are home to approximately thirty-three million people.
The film documents the many passageways carved out for water, from the primeval forests of Lake Superior to the fountains of Chicago and the barren puddles in Detroit’s streets, revealing how fresh water grows tainted along its route by the wreckage of human civilization. We see water in all its vibrancy as it courses through marshes and through the much smaller landscape of the human body, and become all the more aware of the profound impact we are having on the resource that has such a profound impact upon us.
Combining visual poetry with an informative historical approach, Waterlife’s exploration of our fragile global environment has something in it for everyone. The captured footage is magnificent, and McMahon effectively communicates to his audience all the myriad ways in which water is moving in and around us every second of every day.
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