Water Shorts

Q&A with Who Owns Water directors David Hanson, Michael Hanson & Andrew Kornylak!

They say whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting, but we would respectfully add that water is also for playing. Who Owns Water highlights the conflicts that can arise when water becomes scarce, but all three films in this program are broadly about finding joy in and above water.

Begin Again
John John Florence & Blake Vincent Kueny, USA, 2013, digital projection, 5m
Surfer John John Florence continues to reinvent surfing with his extremely powerful, almost inhuman ability to push the boundaries on a wave.

The Fortune Wild
Ben Gulliver, Canada, 2014, digital projection, 22m
If Wes Anderson were inspired to make a surf film, it might look like The Fortune Wild. Director Ben Gulliver creates a witty and lighthearted film about a beautiful wild area—Haida Gwaii, a chain of wave-swept, lushly forested islands off the mainland of British Columbia. Surfing, camping, and foraging for food on the unspoiled beaches, three surfers step away from the modern world and into a quieter (and quirkier) existence that is both more attuned and self-sufficient.

Who Owns Water
David Hanson, Michael Hanson & Andrew Kornylak, USA, 2014, digital projection, 48m
Water wars in the American Southwest desert have always been heated, where water is scarce and droughts are frequent, but the same quarrels are unthinkable in lusher areas of the country. However, that is changing as Georgia, Alabama, and Florida are locked in a battle over water sourced from their once-bountiful rivers. Two young brothers decide to paddle the three rivers in the Apalachicola–Chattahoochee–Flint River Basin to tell the story of a system that still flows despite being threatened from all sides. Who Owns Water received a Mountainfilm Commitment Grant in 2013.