Watermark

“Without water we are nothing, the traveler thought. Even an emperor, denied water, would swiftly turn to dust. Water is the real monarch, and we are all its slaves.” — Salman Rushdie

Award-winning filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal and renowned photographer Edward Burtynsky, who together made 2007's acclaimed documentary Manufactured Landscapes, return with a spectacular film about man's troubled relationship with life's most precious resource, water. Packed with startling, breathtaking and unforgettable images, Watermark is a visual feast. We see the colossal construction site in China of the world's largest dam, six times the size of Hoover Dam; the geometric intricacies of ancient "step wells" in Rajasthan, where mazes of stairs lead deep into the earth; the barren desert where the mighty Colorado River no longer flows into the ocean; the water-intensive tanneries of Dhaka, Bangladesh, spewing poison; the mass river-bathing ceremony in the "Mother Ganges" that draws 30 million Hindu faithful in one day; the ingenious terracing of steep slopes for rice paddies in China—and the peasant who patrols the borders of his fields on the watch for water thieves. The viewer is immersed in a magnificent force of nature that we all too often take for granted—until it's gone.