Watermark (2013) - full transcript
Vignettes demonstrating humankind's relationship to water are presented. Many of the vignettes portray water as a commodity, as integral part and parcel of the goings-on and/or as an input into the proceedings, often where its use affects its future use in another means. A few vignettes portray water in its cultural importance. Tying these vignettes together is a general presentation of the affect of climate change on how water can no longer be used as it once was, and how it will affect future use. Also tying them together is Edward Burtynsky putting together an equivalent book on the issue.
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Well, in the past,
the river was very beautiful.
Many years ago.
The Colorado River was full then.
A lot of water. There was a lot of fish.
A lot of big-mouth fish,
a lot of grey mullets...
A lot of fish.
But then it dried up and we had to go...
All the fish died.
It drained, that's it.
People have come saying,
"Yes, of course we are going
to release water,
so the river is going to have water."
Though they never came back.
And when they say, "We are going
to release water", it's a lie!
There is no water anymore.
Colorado River Delta, Mexico
Xiaolangdi Dam Silt Release
Yellow River, Henan Province
Xiluodu Dam, Jinsha River
Yongshang County
Edward Burtynsky Studio
Toronto
Ogallala Aquifer
450,000 KM2
Bill Nance
All-American Canal, California,
130 KM
lnocencia Gonzales Sainz
It's dry.
Dry, dry.
Imperial Valley, California,
11,608 KM2
Hazaribagh Tannery District,
Dhaka
Our leather is not sold here in Bangladesh.
It is all for export.
Rafikul Islam Sarkar
Our leather goes to Italy, Germany, China,
Hong Kong, and the U.S.
It goes to Canada too.
Our biggest market is Europe and the U.S.
We use a lot of chemicals
in processing the hides.
Soda ash is used for cleaning,
as well as detergent.
We use chemicals in liming also.
Nothing happens without chemicals
in any stage of tanning.
Chromium is used to tan the hides.
Leather tanneries need water.
No job here is done without water,
a lot of water.
Every stage requires
one to two thousand litres of water.
The wastewater flows
into the Buriganga River.
Stikine River Watershed, Northern B.C.,
52,000 KM2
Oscar Dennis
Abalone Farms, Luoyuan Bay,
East China Sea
Do you have abalones with the green head?
There aren't any.
Check if they have some.
I will make a fortune by selling these.
How much will that be?
- 109.8! - How could it be so light?
You've got a bad scale.
The women are complaining
about being tired.
We can get our money at the pier.
There are eight of us.
Or I can pay you in the next two days.
We get our money right
after we finish work.
What should we make for lunch?
Catch a fish.
Some sea snails.
Put the sea snails into the water.
I'll do that.
You come here and cut the carrot.
Let me cook.
I didn't put much salt in the dish.
So what?
Just a little salt.
It's fine not to put
much salt into seafood.
Because our abalone are grown in the sea,
we have to grow them densely.
If we grow them sparsely,
we'll be risking everything in typhoons.
Lin Jianqing
So we tie all the farms together
which benefits everyone.
For example, if an anchor snapped
and fell to the bottom of the sea,
it will still be held by the others,
and won't float away.
If one is isolated, when a typhoon hits,
the anchor snaps and it just floats away.
There's not going to be anyone to help.
It's like walking with a friend.
If you trip and fall,
your friend can pull you up.
It's reciprocal.
That's why you see those lots
lined up on the sea.
But eventually, whether it's our farms,
our houses, the environment here...
nothing lasts forever.
National Ice Core Laboratory, Denver
- 35 degrees Celsius
Greenland Ice Sheet
1,710,000 KM2
J.P. Steffensen & Dorthe Dahl-Jensen
Bellagio Fountains, Las Vegas
83,279,060 L
Why aren't you going to work?
There is no bus coming yet.
Did you get food?
Have you got your food?
Don't be late!
Put on your safety helmet everybody.
Turn on the TV.
This routine is called "Talking About Tiger
in the Year of the Tiger",
performed by Niu Wei and Feng Gong.
The mountains on both riverbanks
are relatively strong.
They are solid basalt.
Because of them,
the arch dam can support
a load of 10.4 million tons of water.
What is a double curved arch dam?
Zhou Shaowu
Actually it is what you have seen.
It is an arc shape stretching
from the left bank to the right bank.
And viewing a cross-section of the middle,
it is also an arc vertically.
It is like a curve this way,
and this way as well.
So we call it a double curved arch dam.
Xiluodu's power generation capacity
is 13.86 million kilowatts.
The Hoover is 2.07 million kilowatts.
Thus, Xiluodu Dam's capacity will be
about six times that of the Hoover's.
Keep going.
Down. Down.
Down, a bit more.
I am going to walk down there.
Is it safe?
Is it OK to walk down there?
It's very noisy out here, isn't it?
Yes, so noisy.
Done. Good.
Step Wells, Rajasthan
Lone Pine, California
Polly Hankins
Owens Lakebed, California, 280 KM2; Largest
source of dust pollution in the U.S.
Rice Paddies,
Yunnan Province since 300 CE
The water coming from the woods is divided
into many branches somewhere upstream,
and it flows to the field of each family.
Zhengliang Luo
We use a piece of carved wood
to distribute the water to each family.
Because the water is shared
by many households,
it happens quite often that a
family's water could get stolen.
These two plots, and that one over there,
belong to my family.
Bai Yunfei
That one belongs to us, too.
I sit and watch other people...
and see if they do anything suspicious.
I am a water guard.
Yes, I'm outside.
My sister has gone up.
My family has been growing rice
for generations.
More and more people nowadays leave home
to find work
instead of staying home to grow rice.
The work is too hard.
I want to visit other places.
Beijing -
Look at these lights.
Maha Kumbh Mela, Allahabad
This is the Prayagraj,
king of all the pilgrimages.
Every 12 years is the big Kumbh Mela,
which is this one.
Kumbh's biggest bath is tomorrow.
30 million people
will bathe to get rid of their sins.
Come on, go there.
Over here, over here.
This bucket, bring it here.
Sri Madhavacharyaji Maharaj
In every human being's mind,
there is some sin or another.
Manushya, karmasha, vaishya.
There are three types of sin.
Some are due to our actions,
some due to our mind,
and some due to our feelings.
To destroy all these sins,
we bathe in the Ganges
so all our sins are washed away.
Brothers and sisters.
Brothers and sisters.
Please look after your belongings.
Please look after your belongings.
Be careful of thieves and robbers.
Hail Mother Ganges.
Long live Mother Ganges!
U.S. Open of Surfing,
Huntington Beach
Discovery Bay, California,
Constructed Waterfront
Steidl Publishers,
Goettingen, Germany
Gerhard Steidl
Blue Lagoon Geothermal Springs,
Iceland
Stikine River, Northern B.C.
---
Well, in the past,
the river was very beautiful.
Many years ago.
The Colorado River was full then.
A lot of water. There was a lot of fish.
A lot of big-mouth fish,
a lot of grey mullets...
A lot of fish.
But then it dried up and we had to go...
All the fish died.
It drained, that's it.
People have come saying,
"Yes, of course we are going
to release water,
so the river is going to have water."
Though they never came back.
And when they say, "We are going
to release water", it's a lie!
There is no water anymore.
Colorado River Delta, Mexico
Xiaolangdi Dam Silt Release
Yellow River, Henan Province
Xiluodu Dam, Jinsha River
Yongshang County
Edward Burtynsky Studio
Toronto
Ogallala Aquifer
450,000 KM2
Bill Nance
All-American Canal, California,
130 KM
lnocencia Gonzales Sainz
It's dry.
Dry, dry.
Imperial Valley, California,
11,608 KM2
Hazaribagh Tannery District,
Dhaka
Our leather is not sold here in Bangladesh.
It is all for export.
Rafikul Islam Sarkar
Our leather goes to Italy, Germany, China,
Hong Kong, and the U.S.
It goes to Canada too.
Our biggest market is Europe and the U.S.
We use a lot of chemicals
in processing the hides.
Soda ash is used for cleaning,
as well as detergent.
We use chemicals in liming also.
Nothing happens without chemicals
in any stage of tanning.
Chromium is used to tan the hides.
Leather tanneries need water.
No job here is done without water,
a lot of water.
Every stage requires
one to two thousand litres of water.
The wastewater flows
into the Buriganga River.
Stikine River Watershed, Northern B.C.,
52,000 KM2
Oscar Dennis
Abalone Farms, Luoyuan Bay,
East China Sea
Do you have abalones with the green head?
There aren't any.
Check if they have some.
I will make a fortune by selling these.
How much will that be?
- 109.8! - How could it be so light?
You've got a bad scale.
The women are complaining
about being tired.
We can get our money at the pier.
There are eight of us.
Or I can pay you in the next two days.
We get our money right
after we finish work.
What should we make for lunch?
Catch a fish.
Some sea snails.
Put the sea snails into the water.
I'll do that.
You come here and cut the carrot.
Let me cook.
I didn't put much salt in the dish.
So what?
Just a little salt.
It's fine not to put
much salt into seafood.
Because our abalone are grown in the sea,
we have to grow them densely.
If we grow them sparsely,
we'll be risking everything in typhoons.
Lin Jianqing
So we tie all the farms together
which benefits everyone.
For example, if an anchor snapped
and fell to the bottom of the sea,
it will still be held by the others,
and won't float away.
If one is isolated, when a typhoon hits,
the anchor snaps and it just floats away.
There's not going to be anyone to help.
It's like walking with a friend.
If you trip and fall,
your friend can pull you up.
It's reciprocal.
That's why you see those lots
lined up on the sea.
But eventually, whether it's our farms,
our houses, the environment here...
nothing lasts forever.
National Ice Core Laboratory, Denver
- 35 degrees Celsius
Greenland Ice Sheet
1,710,000 KM2
J.P. Steffensen & Dorthe Dahl-Jensen
Bellagio Fountains, Las Vegas
83,279,060 L
Why aren't you going to work?
There is no bus coming yet.
Did you get food?
Have you got your food?
Don't be late!
Put on your safety helmet everybody.
Turn on the TV.
This routine is called "Talking About Tiger
in the Year of the Tiger",
performed by Niu Wei and Feng Gong.
The mountains on both riverbanks
are relatively strong.
They are solid basalt.
Because of them,
the arch dam can support
a load of 10.4 million tons of water.
What is a double curved arch dam?
Zhou Shaowu
Actually it is what you have seen.
It is an arc shape stretching
from the left bank to the right bank.
And viewing a cross-section of the middle,
it is also an arc vertically.
It is like a curve this way,
and this way as well.
So we call it a double curved arch dam.
Xiluodu's power generation capacity
is 13.86 million kilowatts.
The Hoover is 2.07 million kilowatts.
Thus, Xiluodu Dam's capacity will be
about six times that of the Hoover's.
Keep going.
Down. Down.
Down, a bit more.
I am going to walk down there.
Is it safe?
Is it OK to walk down there?
It's very noisy out here, isn't it?
Yes, so noisy.
Done. Good.
Step Wells, Rajasthan
Lone Pine, California
Polly Hankins
Owens Lakebed, California, 280 KM2; Largest
source of dust pollution in the U.S.
Rice Paddies,
Yunnan Province since 300 CE
The water coming from the woods is divided
into many branches somewhere upstream,
and it flows to the field of each family.
Zhengliang Luo
We use a piece of carved wood
to distribute the water to each family.
Because the water is shared
by many households,
it happens quite often that a
family's water could get stolen.
These two plots, and that one over there,
belong to my family.
Bai Yunfei
That one belongs to us, too.
I sit and watch other people...
and see if they do anything suspicious.
I am a water guard.
Yes, I'm outside.
My sister has gone up.
My family has been growing rice
for generations.
More and more people nowadays leave home
to find work
instead of staying home to grow rice.
The work is too hard.
I want to visit other places.
Beijing -
Look at these lights.
Maha Kumbh Mela, Allahabad
This is the Prayagraj,
king of all the pilgrimages.
Every 12 years is the big Kumbh Mela,
which is this one.
Kumbh's biggest bath is tomorrow.
30 million people
will bathe to get rid of their sins.
Come on, go there.
Over here, over here.
This bucket, bring it here.
Sri Madhavacharyaji Maharaj
In every human being's mind,
there is some sin or another.
Manushya, karmasha, vaishya.
There are three types of sin.
Some are due to our actions,
some due to our mind,
and some due to our feelings.
To destroy all these sins,
we bathe in the Ganges
so all our sins are washed away.
Brothers and sisters.
Brothers and sisters.
Please look after your belongings.
Please look after your belongings.
Be careful of thieves and robbers.
Hail Mother Ganges.
Long live Mother Ganges!
U.S. Open of Surfing,
Huntington Beach
Discovery Bay, California,
Constructed Waterfront
Steidl Publishers,
Goettingen, Germany
Gerhard Steidl
Blue Lagoon Geothermal Springs,
Iceland
Stikine River, Northern B.C.