The Water Front
What if you lived by the largest body of fresh water in the world but could no longer afford to use it? With special guest facilitator Ruth O'Gawa.
Sault Ste Marie
Friday June 13, 2008
Screening begins 19h00
Venue: Algoma University (1520 Queen Street East) in the Great West Life Amphitheatre (Room NW 200)
Canada / 2007 / 53 Minutes
Water is the liquid gold of the 21st century. While corporations urge local governments to privatize municipal water, communities around the world are organizing to ensure affordable access to this life sustaining resource. The Water Front is the story of one community's determination to fight the seemingly inevitable path of water privatization.
Highland Park, Michigan – the birthplace of mass production is a post-industrial city on the verge of financial collapse. The state of Michigan has appointed an Emergency Financial Manager to fix the crisis. The Manager sees the water plant, which Ford built in 1917 to support his auto industry, as key to economic recovery. She has raised water rates and has implemented severe measures to collect on bills. As a result, Highland Park residents have received water bills as high as $10,000, they have had their water turned off, their homes foreclosed, and are struggling to keep water, a basic human right, from becoming privatized. The Water Front follows the personal story of Vallory Johnson, who transforms her anger into an emotional grassroots campaign, defending affordable water as a human right.
The Water Front is not just about water, but touches on the very essence of our democratic system. The film presents a community in crisis but it also presents the powerful enactment of local participation in finding solutions to the problems of our times.
This community portrait is also an unnerving indication of what is in store for residents around the world as cities look to update water systems and face increasingly complex issues such as water shortages and implications of the bottled water industry.
The film raises questions such as; Who determines the future of shared public resources? What are alternatives to water privatization? How will we maintain our public water systems and who can we hold accountable?
Special Guest Facilitator: Ruth O'Gawa
Lake Superior Conservancy and Watershed Council is an international non profit organization whose mission is to ensure the long-term sustainable health of the greatest fresh water lake on earth through basin-wide communication, education, scientific study, preservation and conservation of Lake Superior, its watershed and ecosystems.
Ruth O’Gawa is the Executive Director of the Lake Superior Conservancy and Watershed Council. She was the first Executive Director of the Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council in Petoskey Michigan which began 28 years ago. Ruth has been involved in land use planning, watershed issues, and conservancy work for over 40 years.
Sault Ste. Marie Region Conservation Authority
Draft Proposed Terms of Reference for Sault Ste. Marie Region Source Protection Area
The public is invited to review the draft proposed Terms of Reference online at www.ssmrca.ca, in person or at any of the following locations: Prince Township municipal office, the Civic Centre Clerk’s office or the Sault Ste. Marie Region Conservation Authority, Monday-Friday during office hours.
Please plan on attending one of the public meetings listed below.
Tuesday June 10, 2008
Sault Ste. Marie, Civic Centre
Russ Ramsay Room
4:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Wednesday June 11, 2008
SSMRCA Office
4:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Thursday June 12, 2008
Prince Township Municipal Office
4:00 pm – 8:00 pm
In the latest publication released from the SSMRCA read about:
* History of the SSMRCA
* Source Protection Planning & Drinking Water Source Protection
* Clean Water Act, 2006
* Meet Your Source Protection Committee Members
Liz Miller is a documentary filmmaker, community media artist, and professor with an MFA in Electronic Arts from Renssellaer Polytechnic Insitute and an BA in Social Thought and Political Economics from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. For the last fifteen years, Miller has developed documentary and community media projects with youth, senior citizens and a wide range of human rights organizations.
Her 30-minute documentary, Novela, Novela,
an inside look at Nicaragua’s most political and popular “social soap opera,” has been integrated into high school curricula and used by international coalitions working against violence and defending the rights of women, children and glbt populations.
Miller has exhibited her work around the world and won awards from the International Association of Women in Radio and Film, Latin American Studies Association, and the National Educational Media Network. THE WATER FRONT is her most recent work and has already won two awards; the Ramsar Medwet Award at Ecofilms in Greece and the Environmental Award, Media that Matters.
Having lived in Central America for half a decade, Liz continues to conduct media workshops for women and human rights organizations across the Americas and internationally. She is currently a full time professor in the Communication Studies program at Concordia University in Montreal and a co-founder of the Concordia Documentary Center. Her newest project involves refugee youth in Montreal.
