Voices from the Waters 2009: 4th International Water (...)

Bangalore Film Society in association with Alliance Francaise de Bangalore, Svaraj, Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival, Ithaca College, USA (FLEFF), Charter of Human Responsibilities, Karnataka Chalanachitra Academy, Suchitra Film Society, Federation of film societies of India (Southern Region) and YWCA presented the fourth edition of Bangalore’s biggest environmental Film Festival and the biggest water film festival in the world: Voices from the Waters 2009: 4th International Water Film Festival from the 4th to the 6th September 2009.

From neighborhood ponds to the holy rivers to the oceans- the images of the acclaimed, feted and riveting films from across the globe took the public on a journey through time, place, memories and civilizations in an attempt to rediscover and celebrate water as the source and origin of our lives.

"If there is magic on the planet, it is contained in water"

Lora Eiseley

“From birth, man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders. He is bolted to earth. But man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free. Buoyed by water, he can fly in any direction-up, down, sideways-by merely flipping his hand. Under water, man becomes an archangel.
The sea, the great unifier, is man’s only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: we are all in the same boat.”

Jacques Yves Cousteau

“When a great tree, over a hundred years old, is uprooted and killed in a few seconds to make way for a couple of inches of tar where no life will ever take root, one cannot but help contemplate a nagging feeling that the world is about to collapse under its own dead weight.
When so much of life revolves around the plastic, the bland and the cheaply disposable, it is only natural for that which is human inside of us to revolt, rebel and pronounce its doom.
As the world steps and rolls over all that is life and the living and moves towards the thoroughly modern, it is our collective imaginations that are being cramped, colonized, swamped by TV boredom and other detritus of an ugly civilization.
But to contemplate the apocalypse, however fashionable and easy, is to yield your imagination, the only thing of true and pure value that makes one human, to the modern atrocities. Rebellion is made of stronger stuff. To rebel is to hope beyond the odds, to rebel is to tell tales of life in 4000 AD where man first comes in contact with his nearest neighbors in outer space, to rebel is to plant a sapling whose fruits will be eaten by children yet to be born.
It is incomprehensible, it cannot be put into words, in a modern scheme it may be rendered useless but don’t stare at the horizon, don’t stop to look at the landscape presented before you. Stare far and beyond. It is there that lies the first light to lead you to a new dawn- where life is teeming and the imagination unfettered and greater still.”

Prof. Ly Saiwa, The Book of Bright Futures