MOVIE: FLOW: FOR THE LOVE OF WATER

I have always lived near water. Always. I cannot imagine my life without this necessary and soothing substance. I need it in my life for the usual reasons but also, it soothes my soul. A rising full moon over the clear water of a quiet lake on a warm summer evening is what paradise is made of.

The following is a movie no one should miss. Truly, it is about a matter of life or death for all of us ~ water.

Called FOR THE LOVE OF WATER or FLOW. I watched it at my daughter's home this afternoon and recommend it highly. It is not ponderous, moves swiftly and enlightens us all leaving us with positive plans for action.

"An astonishingly wide-ranging film. An informed and heartfelt examination of the tug of war between public health and private interests." ~ New York Times

"Lively and engaging...Smartly Done" ~ Los Angeles Times

Irena Salina's award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century ~ The World Water Crisis.

Salina builds a case against the growing privatization of the world's dwindling fresh water supply with an unflinching focus on politics, pollution, human rights, and the emergence of a domineering world water cartel.


Interviews with scientists and activists intelligently reveal the rapidly building crisis, at both the global and human scale, and the film introduces many of the governmental and corporate culprits behind the water grab, while begging the question "CAN ANYONE REALLY OWN WATER?"

Beyond identifying the problem, FLOW also gives viewers a look at the people and institutions providing practical solutions to the water crisis and those developing new technologies, which are fast becoming blueprints for a successful global and economic turnaround.

This documentary and a three-alarm warning, “Flow” dives into our planet’s most essential resource ~ and third-largest industry ~ to find pollution, scarcity, human suffering and corporate profit. And that’s just in the United States.

This film is less depressing than galvanizing, an informed and heartfelt examination of the tug of war between public health and private interests.

From the dubious quality of our tap water (possibly laced with rocket fuel) to the terrifyingly unpoliced contents of bottled brands (one company pumped from the vicinity of a Superfund site), the movie ruthlessly dismantles our assumptions about water safety and government oversight.

We won't mention fluoride or drugs or any of the other things being used to doctor our water.

Still reeling, we’re given a distressing glimpse of regions embroiled in bitter battles against privatization. In South Africa, villagers drink from stagnant ponds, unable to pay for the water that once was free, and protesters in Bolivia ~ where waste from a slaughterhouse is dumped into Lake Titicaca ~ brave gunfire to demand unrestricted access to potable water.


And lest we begin to comfort ourselves with first-world distance, Ms. Salina cleverly frames this section with the protracted conflict between the residents of Mecosta County, Mich., and the gluttonous demands of a Nestlé bottling plant.

Naming names and identifying culprits (hello, World Bank), “Flow” is designed to awaken the most somnolent consumer. At the very least it should make you think twice before you take that (unfiltered) shower.

“The film questions the very nature of water and our relation to it,” says director Irena Salina. “It shows how local action can challenge giant corporations, and how the privatization of water has jeopardized the way of life for entire populations.”

FLOW chronicles the stories of people across the world as they fight for their right to water: it follows a community of concerned citizens in Michigan as they take on a corporate water-bottling plant; it shows the massive protests of the Bolivian people against water privatization; it documents simple technology implemented across India to cope with water shortages.

“One of the things that became immediately apparent to me was that water is a truly unifying element. We all need it, we all want it and more than anything else in the world it is the one thing that connects us all,” comments Salina.

PLEASE ENJOY AND LEARN. THIS EFFECTS US ALL. AND REMEMBER TO BOYCOTT NESTLE FOR ITS WATER THEFT IN MECOSTA COUNTY, MICHIGAN.