Event

Water on the Table

Mar 23

(Liz Marshall, 2010, Blu-ray, 79 min)

Visiting filmmaker Liz Marshall, plus World Water Day panel on The Human Right to Water: Connecting Local and Global Struggles

Co-presented with Stop Veolia Seattle and The Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice

Sunday, Mar 23 at 06:00PM

Water On The Table features the story of Maude Barlow, lauded as an "international water-warrior" for her crusade to have water declared a human right. The film shadows her life on the road, in Canada and the United States, over the course of a year, documenting her public face as well as the unscripted woman behind the scenes.

Barlow became a leader in the global water justice movement during the mid-1980s, when Canada's water became a "tradable good" in the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement. Barlow fought to remove that label (water was ultimately included in NAFTA as not only a good, but also as an investment); water has since defined her.

Barlow's critics regard her as an alarmist; some are policy and economic experts who argue that water is no different than any other resource, and that the best way to protect freshwater is to privatize it. Water on the Table presents both sides of the discussion alongside a riveting film portrait of an activist, framed by cinematic, haiku-style images that linger on watersheds, wetlands, rivers, estuaries, waterfalls and lakeselevating water beyond the political and into the realm of a meditation on where our soul lies, as a species dependent on planet Earth.

"Water must be declared a public trust and a human right that belongs to the people, the ecosystem and the future, and preserved for all time and practice in law. Clean water must be delivered as a public service, not a profitable commodity." Maude Barlow