We’re honored to announce that our short documentary THE WATERSHED is in the lineup at the 23rd annual Woods Hole Film Festival!
Held this year from July 26 to August 2, our screening will be in Shorts Program II on Sunday, July 27 at 5 PM in the Redfield Auditorium. We’re thrilled to have a large-venue screening, and to share the screen with some very cool-sounding narrative and documentary shorts! Download the festival schedule here.
In revealing portraits of the people affected by nutrient pollution on Cape Cod, THE WATERSHED brings this mostly-invisible problem into sharp focus. For quahog fisherman John Perry, buying a home right on an estuary made it possible to make a living and enjoy life on the waterfront. But algae has choked out the quahog habitat, putting his livelihood at risk. Emma Jo Mills is a Wampanoag artist who grew up on Santuit Pond, regularly eating fish her family would catch there year-round. Thirty years later, the algae pollution is so bad she no longer can eat the fish, and she rarely ventures out to kayak.
With input from Wampanoag tribe leaders, aquaculture experts, and local oyster farmers, this short documentary offers the natural filtering capacity of shellfish as a partial solution to the problem. But despite the promises of aquaculture, is it too much to ask Mother Nature to solve the problems of development? Should we put all our oysters in one basket? As Mills points out, if we want to preserve Cape Cod’s natural beauty and lifestyle, we must learn to live in harmony with the environment that connects and sustains us all.
THE WATERSHED is a cinematic cut of two short documentaries we’ve produced for the Association to Preserve Cape Cod. While you’ll see some of the same characters and similar scenes, this festival cut is intended to be more cinematic than scientific. We believe the message— that Cape Codders are connected by water and are already impacted by its degradation— is even stronger with this narrative approach.
Many thanks to the APCC, its members, and funders, for supporting this project, and to Jeremy Mayhew of Oceanscape Arts (and the creator of the 2013 WHFF bumper!) for his animation expertise.
