Humankind has been changing its surrounding landscapes for centuries, thereby disrupting the global water cycle. The ‘Let’s talk about water’ festival, with its multiple events, strives to draw attention to this issue in Delft this February. What should you go see?
The festival kicked off on Monday February 5th with a masterclass for students of Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urbanism named ‘Between Water and Land: a look at thresholds’. Tomorrow, between 15:00 and 17:00, they will present their project micro movies in a workshop in the Orange Room in the Library.
Scroll down for the entire program…
The focus of the festival this Friday and Saturday will be on the Nile River, with a screening of the documentary trilogy ‘The Nile Quest’. Terje Tvedt of the University of Bergen travelled along the Nile and documented this ‘mythical and politically intriguing’ river, at a time when the struggle for its water is becoming more urgent and complex because of population growth and climate change. He will give a lecture on Friday at the IHE Delft. The third part of his documentary will be shown at the Filmhuis Lumen in the evening. The next day, there will be ‘A Saturday on the Nile’, in the Falie Begijnhof Theater. Parts 1 and 2 of the trilogy will be screened, as well as three videos by African journalists that portray ‘how the media in their respective countries talk about the Nile’, and other videos about the Nile River.
Over the next week, six water themed documentaries will be screened either at the Filmhuis Lumen or at the Falie Begijnhof Theater. Watch some of the trailers here:
- 12/02: Grass, a nation’s battle for life (1925)
A black and white documentary which follows a band of Persian nomads as they travel through snowy mountains and cross wild rivers in search of better pastures for their livestock.
- Watermark (2013)13/02:
A documentary about how ‘water shaped the world and how mankind put water to use.’ The film-makers worked on this documentary for five years, and it includes 5K ultra high-definition helicopter shots of man-made features such as hydroelectric dams. It is described as ‘a survey of where things stand with the world’.
- 14/02: Holy (un)Holy River (2016)
A documentary about the Ganges River. The makers followed the Ganges, one of the longest rivers in the world, for 1,600 miles, and documented the pollution that is caused by issues such as global warming, agriculture and overpopulation.
- 15/2: Samuel in the Clouds (2016):
This documentary is situated in the Andes and follows Samuel, an elderly Bolivian ski operator who watches as snow fails to come to the mountains because of global warming. It also shows the contrast between Samuel, who honours the mountain spirits, and scientists, who are filmed taking measurements and discussing the changes in order to find a solution.
- 16/02: Thank You for the Rain (2017)
In this documentary, a Kenyan farmer films his and his family’s life on his farm. In the five years that he films, he transforms from a father into a climate activist, documenting the damage climate change has done to his land, and the actions he takes to reduce it.
- 17/02: Human Flow (2017)
Lastly, this documentary by Ai Weiwei follows people from 23 countries to capture the current migration crisis. Using technology like drones, he documents both the scale of the migration crisis and the personal stories of migrants.
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