Professor's Global Rivers Project documentary premieres Nov. 5 in Beijing at international conference
The Panasonic HD camera anchored onto a specially-equipped raft on the Rio Grande, New Mexico, USA.
More than two years of research, planning and more than a year of filming culminate Nov. 5 in Beijing, China, with the world premiere of Global Rivers, a documentary project that depicts the similar, though vastly different, stories of five major world rivers – the Amazon, Danube, Ganges, Mississippi and Rio Grande – and the communities that live along their banks.
The film's screening takes place at the biennial congress for CILECT (Centre International De Liaison Des Ecoles De Cinema Et De Television), the premiere international organization for film and television schools. At the Madrid, Spain, 2006 congress, CILECT provided seed funding for the project, marking the first time the organization has ever funded a U.S. project."
Collaborative approach
Melinda Levin, associate professor and chair of UNT's Radio, Television and Film department, was one of three executive producers for the project, along with Karla Berry, associate professor of media arts at the University of South Carolina and Suzanne Regan, professor of film and television at California State University, Los Angeles.
Irene Klaver, UNT associate professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies and expert on water issues, was heavily involved as a consultant on the project and served as co-director of the filming on the Rio Grande River. Levin's former graduate assistant, Liz Daggett – who is now coordinator for the Center for Outreach in the Development of the Arts at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn., was involved with shooting the footage and has maintained a Global Rivers Project blog about the production.
Filmographers from around the world -- many of whom are natives of the areas near the featured rivers -- participated in filming segments of the documentary.
The project was inspired in part by the River Cultures-Ecological Futures program Klaver initiated with the United Nations Educational, Science and Cultural Organization.
Life blood of the Earth
"Rivers are like the veins of the planet and they change and move and at times serve as political borders," Levin says. "This film tells stories about how communities interact with their river, how they define the river and how they are defined by the river."
The film focuses on 3 themes – work, play and ritual – and weaves these themes into the stories told about the 5 rivers.
Additionally, each river was used to illustrate a specific concept or concepts.
The Brazil-based crew on the Amazon River.
- The South American Amazon, with its great vastness, is the river of secrecy, fear and mystery.
- The European Danube, which was once a political boundary separating Eastern Europe from Western Europe, is depicted as the river of reconciliation.
- The Asian Ganges is the river of ritual and spiritual elements – but is also the river that is the most visibly polluted.
- The North American Mississippi is the river of industry – and the river that humans most attempt to control.
- The North American Rio Grande, as a political border and ecological thoroughfare, is the river of wildlife migration and human immigration.
Division and reconciliation
Levin was the director for the shooting that took place on the Rio Grande, and she talks about the dramatic contrast the film captures between the Rio Grande and the Danube, both of which have traditionally served as political boundaries.
"While we were on the Rio Grande, we shot some of the border wall going up in sections," she says. "And we were invited to film in the Laredo sector headquarters for Customs and Border Protection . It was like being at NASA. There was this huge wall of screens, and each screen is the monitor for a camera that is looking at the river, watching for people trying to illegally cross. The room is staffed with people watching those screens, and they are in constant contact with field officers down on the river, relaying information to them when they see people trying to cross."
Conversely, segments about the Danube include file footage from the late 1980s, of people crossing the river from Eastern Europe into Western Europe for the first time after the iron curtain came down. They also feature the director of the Danube filming, a Serbian native, telling on camera her memories of that historic time.
"The film illustrates the juxtaposition of the joy of a wall coming down and the tension of a wall going up," Levin says.
Telling the rivers' stories
Levin says Klaver was instrumental in the early stages of the project, as the producers worked to figure out which rivers' stories to tell and how to tell them.
"She was seminal early on as we were starting to think through how cultures and communities interact with rivers," Levin says. "She not only gave us a lot of specific info about each of the rivers to help us decide the themes and locations to look at but because she's a philosopher, she's so fantastic at contextualizing that and helping us as visual people see the humanistic side, to help us figure out how do we pull that concept off on camera."
Klaver says she sees the film project as an outstanding opportunity to educate people about rivers and how humanity depends on them.
"The cumulative impact of humans on rivers is not sustainable," she says. "At the same time most people are not aware of the state of their rivers; by becoming more involved, concerned and engaged with their rivers people will be more active stakeholders. Additionally, local groups that have lived on and worked with rivers might gain a larger political voice in major decisions such as dam building or river diversions, which impact their livelihoods tremendously."
Customized documentation
The film that will be screened in Beijing – about 30 minutes long – is the first of several variations that will be customized depending on the audience. Other versions, including the feature-length version Levin hopes to screen in the North Texas area, will include three more rivers – the Nile, Mekong and Los Angeles rivers.
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