Waterlife is a 2009 documentary film

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 and web documentary

Web documentary

A web documentary, interactive documentary or multimedia documentary is a documentary production that differs from the more traditional forms—video, audio, photographic—by applying a full complement of multimedia tools...

 about the state of the Great Lakes

Great Lakes

The Great Lakes are a collection of freshwater lakes located in northeastern North America, on the Canada – United States border. Consisting of Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario, they form the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth by total surface, coming in second by volume...

.

Film

Kevin McMahon began filming Waterlife in 2007. The film explores the beauty of the Great Lakes as well as their degradation due to water pollution

Water pollution

Water pollution is the contamination of water bodies . Water pollution occurs when pollutants are discharged directly or indirectly into water bodies without adequate treatment to remove harmful compounds....

. The film looks at the water system from its headwaters in Lake Superior

Lake Superior

Lake Superior is the largest of the five traditionally-demarcated Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded to the north by the Canadian province of Ontario and the U.S. state of Minnesota, and to the south by the U.S. states of Wisconsin and Michigan. It is the largest freshwater lake in the...

 to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, accompanied by Josephine Mandamin, an Anishinabe elder from Thunder Bay

Thunder Bay

-In Canada:Thunder Bay is the name of three places in the province of Ontario, Canada along Lake Superior:*Thunder Bay District, Ontario, a district in Northwestern Ontario*Thunder Bay, a city in Thunder Bay District*Thunder Bay, Unorganized, Ontario...

, who walks along the Great Lakes each spring to protest deteriorating conditions.

Waterlife is co-produced by Primitive Entertainment and the National Film Board of Canada

National Film Board of Canada

The National Film Board of Canada is Canada's twelve-time Academy Award-winning public film producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary, animation, alternative drama and digital media productions...

 (NFB). The film received the Special Jury Prize for Canadian Feature at the 2009 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival.

Web documentary

The interactive version of Waterlife was created by Toronto-based web and design company Jam3 and creative directors Adrian Belina and Pablo Vio for the NFB, incorporating material from the documentary film. The conception and and development of the website took approximately four months. Waterlife explores different aspects of the state of the Great Lakes through 23 individual sections, incorporating text, images and sound. It received the Webby Award for best web documentary (individual episode).

See also

• The Rise and Fall of the Great Lakes
  The Rise and Fall of the Great Lakes
  The Rise and Fall of the Great Lakes is a 1968 Canadian short film. It is a humorous geography lesson where a tour of the Great Lakes is made by a lone canoeist who experiences most of the cataclysmic changes of ages of lake history...
  
  , a 1968 NFB film about the Great Lakes
• Water on the Table
  Water On The Table
  Water on the Table is a Canadian documentary film directed, produced and written by filmmaker Liz Marshall. The film explores Canada’s relationship to its freshwater resources and features Canadian activist Maude Barlow in her pursuit to protect water from privatization...