TIFF Movie #1: Last Call at the Oasis

Sadly, my 28 day challenges dropped off the map when May hit...and that was four months ago. I thought I'd dust off the old blog to post about my experiences at TIFF. This year, I'm committed to 11 movies (crazy) and I kicked off the first last night with Last Call at the Oasis (with great company in the form of Karen, Andrew and Sabina).

My ticket in! The first of many.

Last Call at the Oasis is a documentary about our world's depleting water supply. The film is divided into three parts - the first, talks about how we're using up the world's freshwater supply at an alarming rate; the second, addresses water contamination in particular chemicals like hexavalent chromium (the stuff Erin Brochovich fought PG&E for) and also medication, which our treatment systems cannot filter out; finally, the film targets how North American society within the last 20 years has all of a sudden equated tap water with something that is dirty and the rise in consumption of bottled water.

The film starts out with an eerie prediction - many political science academics predict that the wars of the 21st Century will not be fought over oil, rather, over water supply. Throughout the film, academics, those who have campaigned for better regulations for clean water and those that have fought against big corporations that have polluted water supplies provide their accounts and personal experiences about how not having access to clean water will be a catastrophic issue in the next 50 years.

The movie was incredibly informative. Incredible visual effects and infographics helped emphasize a problem few of us in the Western world bat an eye at. The movie makes you consider your own water imprint and how much water you consume and waste - like flushing a toilet each time you use it is 6 gallons. Or how a simple BBQ could consume 18,000 gallons of water due to all of the water that has gone into producing the food you serve on the table.

After the film, there was a great Q&A with the director, Jennifer Lu and featured guests in the film like Erin Brochovich and a few of the academics in the movie. The film has not picked up distribution yet, but hopefully it will and you can all see it for yourself and understand why it is so important to consider our water usage.

Erin Brochovich at the Q&A. She's freaking tall!

To see the trailer for the movie, click here.