Between the floods and the emptiness, Mention, 2017-2018 WATERLAT-GOBACIT Short-video Competition
Channel: WATERLAT GOBACIT
Date: 2018-09-18

Entre a cheia e o vazio: A cheia histórica do rio Madeira em 2014 e seus nexos com as UHEs Santo Antônio e Jirau (Between the floods and the emptiness: the historical 2014 flood of the Madeira river and its links with the hydro-energy projects Santo Antônio e Jirau), Mention, 2017-2018 WATERLAT-GOBACIT Short-video Competition (http://waterlat.org/short-video-competition-3/2017-18-short-video-competition/).

DOI: 10.5072/zenodo.244645

This documentary starts from the position that the 2014 “historical flood” of the Madeira river increased the effects of the many “empty spaces” created during the construction of the hydroenergy plants Santo Antônio and Jirau. It also assumes that the flood opened new “empty spaces” of debate over the links between the flood and the hydroenergy plants installed on the Madeira river, given that the media, governments, and energy consortiums (Santo Antônio Energia [SAE] and Energia Sustentável do Brasil [ESBR]) treated it as a disaster without culprits, generating a consensus that the disaster would have been “natural”: a climatic phenomenon. The empty spaces created during the construction of the hydroenergy plants were the result of a licensing process that was completed despite the failures pointed by government regulators, the uprisings of the plants’ workers, the impacts on the river (on the channel, and on the water levels, speed and biochemical properties), fish mortality, banks landslides, the massive removal of riverine communities and their relocation in conditions incompatible with their traditional life worlds. During and after the flood the riverine communities affected by the disaster were turned into spectators: they had their homes and territories condemned as “risk areas”, had neither voice nor vote in the Reconstruction Plan, and there was no debate about the hydroenergy plants’ responsibility in increasing the impact of the flood. The documentary features interviews with riverine people and specialists willing to participate in a panel to develop new studies on the impact of the hydroenergy plants, and clips from a debate promoted by the Federal University of Roraima (UNIR) and the State of Roraima’s Federal Prosecutor (MPF-RO) with specialists to discuss the need of new studies supervised by an independent commission, aimed to make science work for the service of the public interest.

Realização: Mapeamento Social como Instrumento de Gestão Territorial contra o Desmatamento e a Devastação – Núcleo Rondônia e Universidade Federal de Rondônia (UNIR), Brazil.

Apoio: Projeto Nova Cartografia Social da Amazônia (UEA), Brazil.

Roteiro: Luis Fernando Novoa Garzon

Direção: Lou-Ann Kleppa

Fotografia: Carlos Fiengo, Rodrigo Rodriguez, João Marcos Dutra, Eliaquim da Cunha, Paula Stolerman, Daniela Moreira, Inaê Level, Lou-Ann Kleppa, Mario Venere, Altino Machado, funcionário da Transfish.