eco-briefs

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FILM ON DAMS AND RIVER HEALTH SCREENS IN DENVER

Once a testament to human ingenuity, river dams are now more often cited as examples of human intervention gone too far in manipulating the natural world. We’ve begun to better understand the effects of dams on river ecology and fish populations and raise concerns about their effects on the life and health of rivers. DamNation, a documentary film, explores that evolution from the welcome the Hoover Dam received to the welcomed destruction of dams and the free flow of water that resumed.

Filmmakers piled into a van with a few cameras and a list of dams and began to stack up miles and interviews with various stakeholders in the issue, from Nez Perce elders to dam owners and politicians.

“As the miles, months and dams began to stack up, it soon became clear that our original vision of a year-long project would take much longer,” the directors’ statement reads. “We were hard-pressed to find a free-flowing watershed, and finding an intact fishery was impossible.”

The film made over what would become a three-year journey, an engaging and emotional one, screens in Denver at 7:30 p.m. May 14 at the Mayan Theater, Filmmakers Ben Knight and Travis Rummel, from Colorado, will attend the screening.