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 Robert Rattle.

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Sault Sainte Marie
Friday June 13, 2008
Screening begins 20h30
Venue: vélorution outdoor theatre (162 Old Garden River Road) @ dusk

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: Robert Rattle

Robert Rattle conducts research projects on sustainable consumption and provides services as a sustainable development consultant/coach for various government and environmental agencies and organizations.

You can contact Robert Rattle at rattlestake@yahoo.ca or check out his web site at http://www.ncf.ca/~at758

Rattle's Take columns are also archived online at www.saultthisweek.com

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.

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