Where the Water Meets the Sky – Trailer from Camfed on Vimeo.
We talked about our friend Dave Eberts’ film Where the Water Meets the Sky back in 2008 right after its Montreal premiere. Since then, this empowering film has won accolades, including Best Global Insight at the 2008 Jackson Hole Film Festival. Jury members included Katie Evans, Vice President of Acquisitions and Production for National Geographic Films.
Where the Water Meets the Sky uses film as a tool for social change. Not only do the Samfya women (Northern Zambia) in the film learn how to make a documentary about their lives, but as the story progresses and the film takes on a life of its own, the women begin to speak out on issues that affect their lives. From Aids and prostitution to exclusion from school because of reasons as perverse as lacking the money to buy a pen or a notebook.
But as Eberts’ film gains more and more focus, the Samfya women too narrow their focus on a teenage girl who best represents their experiences of poverty and exclusion. So we are told the story of Penelop, a Zambian teenage girl who is orphaned by the ravages of AIDS, stripped of all her parents’ belongings and dismally forced into prostitution.
Narrated by Morgan Freeman, Where the Water Meets the Sky is still getting attention. Rightly so. The Sundance Channel scheduled its U.S. television premiere at 10 p.m. on Dec. 1, which was World Aids Day. It will air again on December 13th.