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News from the Future of Public Media
Telling the Story to Further the Cause – CSM welcomes Visiting Filmmaker Liz Miller
email discuss Posted by Bree Bowman on Mar 24, 2008 at 11:46 AM
You’ve just seen a documentary film that told a powerful story, represented an important cause, raised awareness of an issue critical to people’s lives, or offered solutions to make the world better. Now what? The Center for Social Media welcomed environmental filmmaker Liz Miller for a discussion of her new documentary, The Water Front, and on how to strategically use documentary film to extend its story beyond the screen as a powerful advocacy vehicle for complex social issues.
The Water Front tells the stories of the residents of Highland Park, MI, a post-industrial town in an economic crisis just outside of Detroit. The community is struggling against the unfair -and unaffordable- repercussions of water privatization (a move made by the state of Michigan in an attempt to solve the town’s fiscal woes), which threatened to take away one of our most basic human needs – water.
While The Water Front is very effective in depicting the gross injustice inflicted onto one community, the story also becomes an unsettling reflection of human rights abuses within our own nation and foretells the future of communities in other parts of the world that face water scarcity. The film addresses the conflict of water and urban management from a variety of perspectives, including those of corporations dealing with communities in economic crisis, human rights and environmental advocates and of the residents themselves. This approach engages different groups of people to discuss the issues of water privatization and its larger implications, like race and class discrimination, sustainability and urban development.
Miller cited that her overall goal for the project “was to have more than just footage as one product, [but instead,] to use media to work with people… [and] to use documentary as a vehicle for ‘participation’ rather than observation or an end itself.” Miller used the film as a platform to establish relationships with national and local partners, as well as advocates in the field and the public at large, all of whom bring life to the story beyond the screen. She and her team conducted outreach summits and workshops that followed screenings of the film to engage the public in a serious discussion of the issues raised in the film. They also created several digital outlets like a wiki forum and The Water Channel project to provide the community with updates on the issues and concrete steps on how to take action.
In an environment that is often saturated with other media vying for the attention of the public, Miller noted that “your first instinct is to collaborate with everyone – [but] sometimes that’s not always the best decision.” The most important tactic, Miller said, is to “move forward, but constantly consulting [the public] on the initial advocacy goals and needs of partners.” Ultimately, the life of a documentary lies in the stories of the public. The Water Front project is a compelling case that reveals how true this is.
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