BRATTLEBORO — On Friday, Oct. 3, at 7:30 p.m., Marlboro College Graduate Center hosts a screening of a new documentary, “DamNation,” which takes viewers across the United States in what the producer says is “a powerful odyssey chronicling the shift in attitude about our nation's dams.”
The producer adds the audience “will witness the journey from national pride of the engineering wonder of dams to an awareness of the impact of dams on our rivers and our lives by extension.”
A press release for the event notes the film “opens on a birth, with Franklin D. Roosevelt's dedication of Hoover Dam, and on a death, as the engineer at Elwha Dam powers down the turbine on its last day.”
The film boasts majestic cinematography and unexpected discoveries. The film takes up a metamorphosis in values, from the conquest of the natural world to knowing ourselves as part of nature.
“DamNation” brings us words from a variety of affected peoples such as the Nez Perce, and the concerns of activists, as well as archival footage of the creation of America's large dams in rivers in Maine, Oregon, Washington, and elsewhere.
Producer Matt Stoecker says he was influenced by his experience of witnessing migrating steelhead jump at, and carom off, Stanford University's Searsville Dam. He says he “recognized the destructive power of a single dam on an entire watershed and beyond” and has since become a fish biologist and committed himself to working for the dismantling of dams nationwide.
Stoecker and Yvon Chouinard, founder of Ventura, Calif.-based clothing company Patagonia, teamed up with Felt Soul Media's Ben Knight and Travis Rummel to create “DamNation” in what Stoecker calls an attempt to capture the efforts and effects of tearing down dams.