DamNation premiers March 10 in Austin, Texas, USA at the SXSW Music Film Interactive festival 2014.
This powerful film odyssey across America explores the sea change in the national attitude from pride in big dams as engineering wonders to the growing awareness that the future is bound to the life and health of the rivers, according to the makers of DamNation.
Dam removal has moved beyond the Monkey Wrench Gang. When obsolete dams come down, rivers bound back to life, giving salmon and other wild fish the right of return to primeval spawning grounds, after decades without access. “DamNation”’s majestic cinematography and unexpected discoveries move us through rivers and landscapes altered by dams, but also through a metamorphosis in values, from conquest of the natural world to knowing ourselves as part of nature, according to the film makers.
When, as a young man, DamNation producer Matt Stoecker witnessed migrating steelhead jump at, and bounce off, Stanford University’s Searsville Dam, he recognized the destructive power of a single dam on an entire watershed and beyond. Stoecker is now a fish biologist, who has since spearheaded the removal of more than a dozen such barriers to migration and is actively involved in efforts to dismantle several others. He and Patagonia founder and owner Yvon Chouinard, a long-time “dam buster” who for years has supported groups working to tear down dams, share the desire to free our rivers. Together they decided to capture such efforts, and their healing effects, on film and share them with the world. Teaming up with Felt Soul Media’s Ben Knight and Travis Rummel, DamNation was born.
Check the schedule here
Website for DamNation.
