Irena Salina: Keeping the FLOW Alive

Our talk with the director of the documentary Flow.
By Terry Keefe

Isn't the earth's water supposed to be free? It's sort of like air. Some of your unalienable rights as a human are that you get to breathe the air and drink the water. Sure, there's bottled water. But basic drinking water? Free. Or maybe not. If global warming isn't scaring you enough, think about what will happen if the earth's water supply becomes polluted to the point that eventually only corporations control the drinkable water. That's the warning at the heart of Irena Salina's new documentary Flow, which follows the ongoing pollution of the entire worldwide water system, which is happening concurrently with the emergence of a corporate “water cartel” (potential members singled out in the film include Nestle) that seeks to privatize that same water system.

Explains Salina of what triggered her initial awareness of the situation, “A friend of mine had given me a copy of The Nation and the headline of that issue was 'Who Owns the Water?' The article went on to talk about how water might become the next oil and the term 'Blue Gold' was used. It was right around the time I had a child, and I started to really pay attention.” Salina had no idea what else she would uncover when she initially began filming in New Orleans, prior to Katrina. “I went there to film by myself because one of the biggest privatizations of water in the U.S. was being protested against. There were riots over it,” she recalls. “And then, after that, I began to look more globally at the story. Water has no passport and we are all in the same boat when it comes to the water.” Her journey of water-related discovery taught her how polluted water in poorer countries found its way right back into our own drinking water here in the U.S., and that even bottled water wasn't safe and could contain as many chemicals as tap water, one of the more surprising revelations of the film. “Actually,” says Salina, “at the end of the day, a lot of bottled water is just tap water. I mean, are we fools?”

[Filmmaker Irena Salina.]

Flow takes on some pretty big corporate targets, something which likely didn't help the distribution prospects for the film in this day of the megacorporation. The potential risks of taking on entrenched power weren't lost on Salina, although she soldiered forward regardless. “I was at Sundance when the film projected for the first time, and I was thinking, 'What did I do?' I was a little scared. And I could have been safer and more careful in how I presented things, but I don't think I would have been comfortable doing that. I think it is up to us to force certain companies to be better.” Nonetheless, Flow has found its way into theaters and Salina has experienced a groundswell of support from audience members thankful to her for forcing this story out. Says Salina, “We're 70 percent water. People are very emotional about this, because when you talk about the business of water, you talk about the business of life. It's not a right or left issue, it's an issue of right or wrong.”