Film Review: Reflection: A Walk with Water
by Karen Pecota

Award-winning documentary filmmaker Emmett Brennan collaborates with musician Jacob Collier to present an intimate approach to the telling of California's water story in their latest documentary narrative Reflection: A Walk with Water. This story focuses on California's environmental troubles with water, but it represents a bigger picture of the possibilities of how we, as society, can reshape our communities with a special focus on water recycling.

Brennan's investigative work calls upon experts who explain the core principles that would allow water to return to a primary role in our environment. Brennan states, "Society has lost touch with this delicate and crucial place water has in the environment." To emphasize his point, he joins like-minded activists on a several-hundred-mile trek on foot along the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Their mission is meant to raise awareness about California's water crisis. Brennan lays out those troubles of California's misuse of water: causing water shortages, the release of toxic dust particles into the air, and shows many areas vulnerable to massive wildfires.

Brennan's walk with water isn't an all doom-and-gloom message because he does find stories of hope and healing for California's troubles. Brennan's Reflection: A Walk with Water uses the trek to discover that there is a profound way to have a relationship with water that could take place if we design our lives around this valuable commodity; and, ask ourselves, how different could our communities look like if we re-work a better usage of or re-cycle the water we now occupy.

Brennan and Collier say, "Our film is a very personal meditation on water, as well as a practical roadmap for reimagining our collective human impact on the world." A documentary not to be missed. It is food-for-thought to be taken seriously that should move each of us toward a response.