Documentary: Together for Water💦
Documentary Produced by roots & routes ic, the Afro-Descendant Community of La Chiquita, and the Awá Indigenous Community of Guadualito WITH COLLABORATION OF SELVAS PRODUCCIONES.
An intercultural collaborative project in defense of La Chiquita and Guadualito Residents’ Human Right to Clean Water and of the Rights of La Chiquita River.
Location: Chocó Lowland Rainforest, Border of Colombia—San Lorenzo Canton, Esmeraldas Province, Ecuador
LEARN MORE ON OUR WEBPAGE: Together for WATER💦
WATCH The TRAILER:
In the process of creating a collective documentary with an intimate and artisanal gaze, Afro-descendant and Indigenous youth of the Chocó Rainforest in Esmeraldas, become inspired by their elders’ life stories and ongoing defense of territory and denounce a common experience of marginalization and contamination of their rivers.
Objective of film
Together for Water💦 shares the experience of the community youth who, through film school workshops, come together to visibilize their current reality of oil palm companies polluting their rivers. The youth rise up to re-exist, to give voice to their elders’ stories who have struggled for justice for over two decades. Together the youth and elders of La Chiquita and Guadualito ask the world to bear witness and to join them in their struggles.
Youth from La Chiquita & Guadualito, together with Eriberto Gualinga in Chocó -Amazon Film School (Photo by J.Hazlewood, 2017).
The documentary’s vision emerges from an Amazon-Chocó film school experience that took place in 2016-2018 in communities treated as "disposable", but who resist and fight for their survival.
The people of San Lorenzo show the world a story of struggle and hope. La Chiquita and Guadualito's legal processes towards justice began in 2002. In July 2010, they filed the first constitutional civil lawsuit for Nature's rights in the world. Finally, in January 2017, the Provincial Court of Emeralds of Ecuador issued a decision in favor of the communities.
Currently, the two communities are still struggling to apply the judge's decisions. The documentary serves to raise public opinion and support for the application of the constitutional laws of Ecuador and to demand justice in a place that’s historically and currently abandoned by the state and left subject to ecological violence.
LA CHIQUITA AND GUADUALITO SEEK JUSTICE AND RESPECT FOR
THEIR TERRITORIES,
THEIR CULTURES,
AND THE RIGHTS OF THE FORESTS AND RIVERS.
THEY ARE THE VOICES FOR THE RIGHTS OF THE LIVING CHOCó RAINFOREST AND RIVERS.
La Chiquita River runs black due to Los Andes Oil Palm Company dumping their chemical waste from palm oil extraction
—Photo shot with Roots & Routes IC Intercultural Drone Team, April 17, 2019.
Horizontal and Vertical Food Forest Landscapes of Guadualito—Drone Shot by Roots & Routes IC Intercultural Team, 18 April 2019.
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