Irena Salina’s film “Flow – For the Love of Water ” aka “Flow – How did a handful of corporations steal our water” is a well made documentary that looks at the issues regarding clean portable (drinkable) water to the world’s population at large.

The film’s narrative weaves together myriad issues including providing water to all; the corporations involved in bottling and selling water, issues regarding privatisation of water; the World Bank as a provider of loans to build dams, and finally the hope in terms of activism that ensures that water is available for all.

http://www.metacafe.com/fplayer/yt-EOaXu_PlsQ8/flow_for_love_of_water_trailer.swf

I often tell my students that documentaries are not news – and they don’t have to even keep up the pretense of being unbiased. Documentaries are a POV – and the point of view presented here is that Water belongs to all of us – and we cannot let a few corporations take over this natural resource and exploit it.

The film looks at the issues surrounding water, in both the developed & the developing world. It also looks at indigenous, innovative solutions for the affordable provision of water to large numbers of people (decentralization is one of the solutions)

The ray of hope in this film is provided through the bits in India – where men and women of extraordinary courage and conviction have made sure that rights are not trampled over. Be it Vandana Shiva, Medha Patkar, Rajendra Singh , Shripad Dharmadhikary , or activism in places like Plachimada against Coke – what you see are a people – who are willing to take on the power elite and win.

The depressing part of this film comes from the USA – where the system conspires to trample over the rights of individuals. Be it in terms of pesticides that are banned elsewhere and available in the US or in the form of battles against depletion of ground water by large corporations – the citizen loses.

There is a lovely line in the film that encapsulates much of what has gone wrong with ‘centralised’ development over the last 75 years :

“the world bank knows to spend a billion dollars in one place, it doesn’t know how to spend a 1000 $ in a million places “

I liked the film. It was well researched, well shot and well put together. The interviews were crisp – No one rambled for too long and the flow was gripping . There is only one problem that I had with the film – that too many issues being crammed together in the two hours. As a result a) there is an information overload; and b) more seriously, everything ends up looking like a grand conspiracy theory to keep people away from clean drinking water. While that might be the case, it doesn’t do too much good to hit the audience on the head with it ! Let them figure it out themselves.

But, the film is definitely a good view – worth the two hours that you will spend on it