Film and video · IPAM Amazônia
Nossa Água: wells and cisterns in Pará settlements, for IPAM
A documentary on wells and cisterns that brought drinking water to more than 500 families in land reform settlements in western Pará, with a technology for each place.
- Client
- IPAM Amazônia
- Year
- 2016 to 2017
- Territory
- Settlements along the Transamazônica, the Lower Amazon and the Upper Tapajós, in western Pará
- Format
- Institutional documentary
- Funding
- Água para Todos (Water for All) Program, in partnership with Incra, the Viver, Produzir e Preservar Foundation and local organizations
The challenge
The Amazon holds Brazil's largest freshwater reserve, but much of the region's rural population has no access to a safe source. In the settlements of western Pará, families walked kilometers with buckets and drank unsafe water. IPAM wanted to show funders and a broad audience how having good water close to home transforms health and rural life, and that each territory required its own solution.
The film
What we delivered
- Institutional documentary
- Animated bumpers for each water supply technology
- Settlement map and lettering
What we did
We filmed in the settlements served and listened to the families, technicians and project partners. The script shows before and after: the walk with the bucket, the building of the wells, the water reaching the tank.
To explain the technologies without tiring viewers, each got an animated bumper, followed by real footage and the project's figures: shallow well, deep well, wide-mouth well and rainwater harvesting at schools. A map and lettering locate the settlements and dismantle the idea that abundant water is accessible water.
One point from the brief guided the edit: showing that rainwater can indeed be a clean source.
“For each settlement, the best social technology.”
Outcome
The film presents the 158 water supply systems installed and the more than 500 families served. In 2017, it was selected for an international documentary festival in Mozambique.
