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The Weight of Water: The 2019 Film Award Winners

  • Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema 506 Bloor Street West Toronto, ON, M5S 1Y3 Canada (map)

Celebrate World Water Day

Share the journeys of our inspiring award winners.

You won’t want to miss this year’s award winners, two of which are premieres, in Canada and Ontario:
Water 2 | USA
Alice's Garden | USA
The Weight of Water | USA

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Emcee: Dr. Stephen Scharper
Associate Professor, University of Toronto


Water 2
Morgan Maassen
USA | 2017 | 5 min
Award Winner | Best Short Film

In his two-part series, filmmaker Morgan Maassen follows surfers as they paddle and glide through the South Pacific Ocean off the coast of the French Polynesian Islands, plunging audiences beneath the rolling waves into a world of mesmerizing colour and movement.  With a score as experimental and incandescent as the visual footage, WATER 1 and WATER 2 are marvels of filmmaking that you won’t want to miss.

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Alice's Garden
Jenny Plevin
USA | 2018 | 9.5 min
Canadian Premiere
Award Winner | Best Short Film

Alice’s Garden, located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is situated on the grounds and waterways that provided safe harbour for freedom seekers as part of the Underground Railroad.  Today, these sacred grounds continue to uplift the community through urban agriculture and community engagement. In this powerful short, Alice’s Garden’s Executive Director, Venice Williams, passionately connects the grounds valuable history with its present ability to serve hundreds of families, and with the need to conserve and protect the land through innovative water solutions for future generations.  ALICE'S GARDEN is a deeply illuminating and heartfelt film.

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The Weight of Water
Michael Brown
USA | 2018 | 80 min
Ontario Premiere
Award Winner | Best Feature Film

THE WEIGHT OF WATER is an exhilarating and inspiring film that follows blind adventurer, Erik Weihenmayer, as he kayaks the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. Erik, however, is no stranger to hard-earned success, having been the first blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 2001. This time around, filmmaker Michael Brown captures Erik’s increasingly difficult fight through turbulent and dangerous rapids, while taking audiences on an emotional journey through struggle, despair, determination, and achievement.

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Q & A discussion to follow the screenings.


SWAG
Please support Ecologos initiatives by purchasing Water Docs T-Shirts ($25) and Water Bottles ($20) available at all Water Docs Film Festival screenings.

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