Watchwatermarkmovie
Watchwatermarkmovie
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Watch, Then Read: Following Water Through the Frame

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Nobody looks up at a river. That is the small problem the film set out to fix — cameras five hundred metres above the watershed, showing the channels, cooling towers and irrigation pivots we usually see only from the ground.

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Where to Watch

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Stream it at home in 4K HDR, or rent the 5K master from our watch page if your screen can hold it. The aerial sequences were graded for large displays, and the difference is not subtle on a projector. Festival and classroom screenings are listed separately under screenings.

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How the Aerials Were Made

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Five months of flights, mostly in the hour after sunrise, when the wind drops and the water turns to glass. Gyro-stabilised rigs, long lenses, and a pilot who learned to hover a metre above irrigation canals without disturbing them. Much of what you see is a single unbroken take.

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The Argument Underneath the Images

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Roughly seven of every ten litres the world withdraws goes to growing food; most of the rest drives turbines, cooling towers and factories. The film follows both, from reservoir to pivot to tap. It is less a warning than a map.

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What to Read Next

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  • Cadillac Desert — Marc Reisner
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  • Water: A Biography — Giulio Boccaletti
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  • Where the Water Goes — David Owen
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  • The United Nations World Water Development Report, published annually
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Keep Going

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Flight logs, camera settings and the places we could not fit into ninety minutes live in our field notes. Start there with whatever question the film left open.

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