Experiencing Interruptions?

Where There Once Was Water

A song for the sacred in all of us. An invitation to change our perspective, rewrite the story, and heal our relationship with water ... one watershed, one meal, one raindrop, at a time. Water is love, and if we write it together, this love story may indeed become one for the ages.

  • Brittany App
    Director
  • Brittany App
    Producer
  • Brittany App
    Writer
  • Garrett Russell
    Writer
  • Brandon Maahs
    Composer
  • Garrett Russell
    Editor
  • Project Type:
    Documentary
  • Genres:
    Environmental
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 14 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    January 15, 2021
  • Production Budget:
    40,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Transitions Film Festival
    Melbourne
    Australia
    February 26, 2021
    World Premiere
    Official Selection
  • San Luis Obispo International Film Festival
    San Luis Obispo
    United States
    March 14, 2021
    USA Premiere
    Official Selection & Closing Night Film
Director Biography - Brittany App

Brittany App is a professional photographer with two decades of experience and two circumnavigations of the globe under her belt, and she debuts "Where There Once Was Water" as a first-time director & producer. Her passion is water and water access. She's a story-teller, a voice artist, and a self-proclaimed shepherdess-in-training. She lives off the grid in the remote Carrizo Plain, CA - with her great pyrenees Luna, seven duck ducks, and a rag-tag wooly crew of sheep and alpacas.

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Director Statement

Access to clean water changes a life. After my travels around the world in 2008, this truth became too much to carry without some sort of action on my part. In 2010 I chose to pedal a bicycle across the United States to raise money for WaterAid, an international non-profit working to provide access to clean water and sanitation, globally. In 2013 I began photographing the effects of the drought in my home state of California, through a personal photography project which ultimately became this film. I have since become active with DigDeep, a nonprofit working to provide running water to families in Navajo Nation. There are still over 1.7 million people, right here in the United States, who are living without access to clean running water at home.

Through research, curiosity, and love, I have attempted, with this film, to be in service to the water that gives us life. To tell the story that connects us all ... the story of water. Time is short. The climate has changed. Water is sacred. We must find a new way. We must write a new story. And we must write it together. The choice point has arrived.