Flow: For Love of Water

11 votes and 0 Reviews

Rotten Tomatoes® Score
81% 78%

Release Date: October 17, 2008 (limited)

On DVD/VOD: January 20, 2009

Documentary

"Thousands have lived without love, not one without water." – W.H. Auden

With this quote, so begins Irena Salina's Flow, a documentary that's awash with shots of gushing water. But it paints a dire portrait of the world's fresh-water resources, which are rapidly running out. Drought and pollution have reduced our supply, while privatization is threatening the rest. Over a five-year period, Salina traveled all over the world, from France, India and Canada, to the United States, where rocket fuel has made its way into tap water, and Bolivia, where a river runs red with blood from a slaughterhouse.

Did you know that:

• Of the six billion people on earth, 1.1 billion do not have access to safe, clean drinking water? (www.charitywater.org)
• While the average American uses 150 gallons of water per day, those in developing countries cannot find five? (www.charitywater.org)
• The water and sanitation crisis claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns? (www.water.org)
• According to the National Resources Defense Fund Council, a scientific study that tested more than 1,000 bottles of 103 brands of water found about 1/3 of the bottles contained synthetic organic chemicals, bacteria and arsenic?
• Water is a $400 billion dollar industry – the third largest behind electricity and oil. (CBC News, Flow)
• California's water supply is running out. It has about 20 years' worth left in the state. (Canadian author Maude Barlow, Flow)

The film marks the second documentary from France-born, New York-based Irena Salina, following her award-winning Ghost Bird: The Life and Art of Judith Deim.