Living Water | ماءٌ حَيٌّ

Thursday 11 November - Sunday 14 November, All Day

£5 Book Tickets

Film

Watch on Eventive
Arabic and English with subtitles

The vibration of machines echoes across the desert. Ever since Jordanian nomads settled in the spectacular landscape of Wadi Rum, they grew dependent on complex water infrastructure. The source is right below their feet, yet they struggle to meet basic needs.

In the meantime, deep water extraction feeds private large-scale farms, animates visionary development and secures growing urban population. Bedouins, farmers and city dwellers: they all expect to have a fair share, but digging for “blue gold” unleashes environmental timebomb.

Living Water tells the story of power, exploitation and changing ecological circumstances in one of the most water-poor countries in the world.

Living Water was made with (in order of appearance):
Attalah Faraj Al Mazanh
Erga Rehns
Oubeid Al Zawaideh
Ali Hamad Al Zalabia
Tarek Atef Ahmed Bukah
Nazar Riyadh
Muna Dahabiyeh
Emad Hijazin
Ali Mutlaq Al Zalabia
Noor Badaren
Hamad Awad Eid Al Zalabia
Elias Salameh
Eid Salem Al Zalabia
Mohammad Al Amamreh
Farhan Kassab Al Amamreh
Mohammad Ababneh
Children of Wadi Rum village: Mohammad, Adib, Anfal, Shaima, Tarek, Hamad
Inhabitants of Aqaba and Wadi Rum village, workers of Aqaba Water Company, workers of Rum Company farms, animals and bushes of Wadi Rum, water infrastructure of Jordan.

livingwaterfilm.com

Production

Anthropictures, Pandistan, Institute of Social Anthropology UNIBE, Center for Strategic Studies UJ

Produced by Pavel Borecký and Veronika Janatková in partnership with Art Salam (Paris) with support of Al Jazeera Documentary (Doha)

Pavel Borecký is a social anthropologist and audiovisual ethnographer. As an awardee of Swiss Excellence scholarship, he is currently finishing multimedia PhD on water scarcity in the Middle East. In his community practice, Pavel runs research organisation Anthropictures, curates film programme EthnoKino, and co-organizes European Applied Anthropology Network

Pavel’s latest films Solaris (2015) and In the Devil’s Garden (2018) focused on the consumption culture in Estonia and the question of decolonisation in Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. Living Water (2020) is his first feature documentary film.

Veronika Janatková is a film producer, director and programmer. She has been active mainly in the field of documentary films, focusing on social-political driven narratives. Among others, she has worked on topics such as global supply chain in the textile industry, the dynamics of the global south and north, current feminist movements in Rwanda or the political realities of post-soviet Caucasus region. 

Her directing debut is a documentary film Ticket to the Moon (2019) dealing with utopias in the context of space explorations in the time of cosmic spring. Veronika co-founded and has been programming the DokuBaku IDFF, the first independent documentary film festival in Baku, Azerbaijan.

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