Whether you have a group of 15 or 1,500 people, film is a great way to bring a community together, learn about the issues, have fun, and inspire action and discussion. For help in organizing a festival, obtaining films, and/or finding speakers and experts in your area, contact Food & Water Watch at water@fwwatch.org or 202.797.6550.

The first Water Justice Film Festival was organized in Washington, D.C., on April 21-27, 2004.

Films available on loan from Food & Water Watch:

Blue Gold: Life For Sale

Director: Sam Bozzo
Year: 2008

2008 will see the release of international award winning filmmaker Sam Bozzo's new feature documentary Blue Gold: Life For Sale, inspired by Maude Barlow's and Tony Clarke's groundbreaking book Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World's Water. Visit the Blue Gold: Life For Sale website for more information.

Thirst

Directors: Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman
Year: 2004
Length: 62 min.
Number of Copies: 16 VHS, 1 DVD and 1 clip reel (clip reel has 4, 1 min. clips)
Also available for purchase: $35/copy

Thirst visits communities in Bolivia, India, Japan, and Stockton, California showing how corporations are rapidly buying up local water supplies. Communities suddenly loose control of their most precious resources. Thirst, a character driven documentary with no narration, reveals how water is the catalyst for explosive community resistance to globalization.

Water Warriors

Director: Liz Miller, Director and Producer
Year: 2006

When residents of Highland Park, MI, just outside of Detroit, began receiving water bills as high as $10,000 and were facing massive shutoffs throughout the community, they took action. This film, Water Warriors, tells the story of an inspiring group of citizens working to address the water crisis in their community. How could this community, with it's own intake from the Great Lakes Basin, the largest body of freshwater in the world, deprive so many of its citizens of water? Water Warriors seeks to answer this question and more. The 6 minute preview is available here.

FUERA (Out!)

Directors: Lindsay Katona and Maria Corcorran
Year: 2005
Length: 32 min.
Number of Copies: 1 DVD

The Bolivian cities of Cochabamba and El Alto experienced massive anti-privatization riots in the wake of significantly raised prices and poor water service, which have left thousands without access to water services. FUERA! focuses pecifically on the water service in El Alto, which has been privatized since 1997 under the French multinational Suez, and its subsidiary, Aguad del Illimani. It investigates how Aguas del Illimani has affected access to water, the quality of water, and public health in the sprawling urban hub of El Alto and the anti-privatization efforts of the Altenos themselves.

The Never Never Water

Director: Alessandra Speciale
Year: 2002
Length: 48 min.
Number of Copies: 2 DVD

The “water lords” have arrived in the Sahel as well. In Ougadougou, Burkina Faso, the search for water has always been an exhausting chore. In addition to the shortage of water there is now also the threat of privatization. In this period of drought, people crowd around the wells, waiting hours to fill a few buckets. Midway between reportage and narrative story telling, this documentary tells the story of Moussa, an itinerant water seller in the suburbs of the capital. It is a mesmerizing and paced tale of water justice at a very personal level.

Water Wars: Struggle in the Holy Land

Director: Iain Taylor
Year: 1997
Time: 26 min.
Number of Copies: 1 VHS

Could the war of the next century be over water rather than oil or politics? Demand for this most basic of resources is outstripping supply in some parts of the world and it is in these areas that the seeds of future wars have already been sown. Struggle in the Holy Land focuses on the apparent water inequalities between Palestinians and Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza.

The Water is Ours, Damnit!

Director: Sheila Franklin and Ravi Khanna
Year: 2000
Length: 33 min.
Number of Copies: 1 VHS, 2 DVD

Focuses on the successful fight against the privatization of water in Chochabamba, Bolivia. Through interviews and riveting footage of street battles that took place between November 1999 and April of 2000, people of Chochabamba tell the story of how they were able to take back control of their water; forcing the government to nullify the contract that sold the city’s water to US-based Bechtel Corporation.

Profits of Doom

Director: John Kampfner
Year: 2001
Length: 50 min.
Number of Copies: 1 VHS

Ghana was once hailed by the World Bank as a showcase for its policies. Today, after two decades of financial “discipline” the majority of Ghanaians are worse off than before. John Kampfner has been to Ghana, tracing the roots of the growing protect movement where the World Bank is now pushing for privatization of water.

Fight for Country: The Story of the Jabiluka Blockade

Director: Pip Starr
Year: 2002
Length: 62 min.
Number of Copies: 1 VHS

For many decades, nuclear colonialism has been a hallmark of the colonial oppression of Indigenous Peoples in Australia - from uranium mining and processing to the nuclear tests in the 1950s and 1960s. Often through the words of Jacqui Katona of the Gundjehmi Aboriginal Corporation (set up to support the Mirrar People's rights), it tells the story of how layers of white laws have been imposed on the Mirrar, riding roughshod over their own law, dispossessing them of their lands, and undermining their rights to determine their own futures and maintain their culture and society. "Fight For Country: The Story of the Jabiluka Blockade" is an independent film about the campaign against the development of the Jabiluka mine, which attracted global attention and widespread support across Australia.

Water for People and Nature

Produced by: Working TV for The Council of Canadians
Year: 2001
Length: 11 min. 30 seconds
Number of Copies: 1 VHS

Who’s After our Water? Increasingly the solution to the growing crisis of equitable access to clean, safe water and the protection of fresh water systems has been the commodification and privatization of the world’s water. Faced with the relentless push by the world’s largest water companies and organizations like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, many activists from around the world began to see that they needed a forum where they could exchange information and strategies to fight the globalization of the earth’s water. This was the simple idea that created “Water for People and Nature: A Forum for Human Rights and Conservation” held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, July 5 to 8, 2001. Organized by the Council of Canadians’ Blue Planet Project, “Water for People and Nature” brought together more than 1,000 experts and activists from over 40 countries. The outcome was a global network of grassroots activists and international organizations committed to empowering communities to demand that the earth’s water be protected as part of our global commons.

Earth Report VI: Plumbing the Rights

Director: Robert Lamb, Rob Sullivan, Amber Delahooke
Year: 2002
Length: 26 min.
Number of Copies: 1 VHS

For one in six people on the planet, finding water for drinking, cooking and washing is a daily struggle. As freshwater resources become ever scarcer, the United Nations has set a target to halve the number of people without enough water by 2015! How can this be achieved? The fashionable panacea is privatization, partnerships and community mobilization. Plumbing the Rights meets the people at the sharp end of the water crisis to find out their ideas on how to solve it.

Other Films We Recommend:

Orange Farm Water Crisis

Director: Christina Hotz
Year: 2003
Length: 15 min.
Watch online!

The Privatization of the Environment: Water. The video Orange Farm Water Crisis shows water privatization in the form of pre-paid water meters in South Africa. The video exists thanks to the activists of the Orange Farm Water Crisis & video activists from around the world many of whom were in Johannesburg for the World Summit of Sustainable Development in 2002.

Thirsting For War

Director: Christopher Mitchell
Year: 1980
Length: 50 min.
To purchase, click here.
Sale: $295; Rent: $75

Water, one of life's necessities, is becoming a source of conflict on a global scale, much like oil. This film takes a comprehensive look at the struggle for control of water in the Middle East, specifically in Turkey, Syria and Iraq. Thirsting for War explores the political and economic dimensions of the growing tension in the region with great clarity. It is also sensitive to the personal dimension of these problems, including interviews with the displaced and suffering.

Chinatown

Director: Roman Polanski
Year: 1974
Length: 131 min.
To purchase, click here.
Sale: DVD from $9.34, VHS from $1.15
Easy to rent at your local video store.

Starring Jack Nicholson, a private detective investigating an adultery case stumbles on to a scheme of murder that has something to do with water.

The Milagro Beanfield War

Director: Robert Redford
Year: 1988
Length: 117 min.
To purchase, click here.
Sale: from $4.99 new and used copies
Easy to rent at your local video store.

A dispute over land in arid New Mexico comes to a head when water rights become involved.

Leasing The Rain

Bill Moyers’ Now
Year: 2002
PBS
Watch online!

Moyers examines the privatization of Cochabamba, Bolivia’s water and the subsequent “water war” which led to the expulsion of corporate privateer Bechtel.

Flooding Job’s Garden

Director: Boyce Richardson
Year: 1991
Length: 59 min.
To purchase, click here.

The James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement of 1975, hailed by governments as a model for future land claims and self-government settlements - is considered Canada's first "modern Treaty." 15 years later, Robert Bourassa's dream of northern hydro-electric power has become a nightmare for the James Bay Cree.

Drowned Out: We Can’t Wish Them Away

Director: Franny Armstrong
Year: 2002
Length: 75 min.
To purchase, click here.
Sale: Buy VHS: $275, Buy DVD: $275; Rent VHS: $95, Rent DVD: $95

Three choices. Move to the slums in the city, accept a place at a resettlement site or stay at home and drown. An Indian family chooses to stay at home and drown rather than make way for the Narmada Dam. Bestselling author Arundhati Roy joins the fight against the dam and asks the difficult questions. Will the water go to poor farmers or to rich industrialists? What happened to the 16 million people displaced by fifty years of dam building? Drowned Out follows the Jalsindhi villagers through hunger strikes, rallies, police brutality and a six-year Supreme Court case. It stays with them as the dam fills and the river starts to rise...

White Gold

Director: Ben Cashdan
Year: 2001
Length: 32 min.
To purchase, click here.
Sale: $25.00

Katse is the highest dam in Africa. It is one of four under construction in Lesotho. Twelve of the world’s largest construction companies are accused of bribery in the project.
In February 2001, Joburg Metro sent in the "Red Ants" (security officers) to evict families from the banks of the cholera-infected Jukskei River in Alexandra -- where even many residents have no running water.
The Lesotho Highlands Water Project is supposed to provide 70 cubic meters of water per second to thirsty consumers in Gauteng, via tunnels under the Maluti mountains. But since the recent corruption scandal broke, people have started to question the largest dam project in Africa. What about the displaced people? And the construction companies and bureaucrats pocketing our tax money? What is the impact of these costly dams on the poorest families in Alexandra and Soweto, who can no longer afford their water bills? Most of all, do we really need all this extra water?

A Journey in the History of Water I-IV

Director: Terje Tvedt
Length: 4 episodes, 45 min. each
Year: 2001
To purchase, click here.

Tells the dramatic story of how the struggle for fresh water has shaped human society to a remarkable extent. This series brings the viewer to about 20 countries all over the world and shows in fascinating variety how people have coped with what is societies' lifeblood - water.

Land of the Rising Water

Earth Report
Year: 2002
Length: 26 min.
To purchase, click here.

Examines Japan's success in urban water management to tackle floods and conserve the country's wetlands. Also offers community initiatives like rainwater harvesting that could show the way.

A Narmada Diary

Directors: Anand Patwardhan and Simantini Dhuru
Year: 1995
Length: 60 min.
To purchase, click here.
Sale: Buy VHS: $390, Rent VHS: $75

Denouncing the inadequacy of resettlement and compensation from the massive Narmada Sardar Dam Project, the adivasis steadfastly refuse to leave their land - even if they drown there. A moving record of the adivasi people's continuing struggle for social justice. On the other hand the Government is sheltering behind talk of national gain, India's `necessary sacrifice' for development - but the film asks, development for whom?