Where the Waters Meet

My friend Evan and I created Where the Waters Meet, a feature length documentary that aims to distill truth by exploring a diverse set of perspectives on the farm. Our goal was to have a more informed public on an important community issue.

We interviewed involved community members to capture their opinions on the environmental, sociological, and economic implications. Some of the topics of conversation were:

• The politics of development
• NIMBYism
• The Tragedy of the Commons
• The Ivany Report
• Environmental concerns
  • Nutrient loading
  • Eelgrass shading
  • Carbon sequestration
• NSDFA regulation

In the early stages of filming, Evan and I focused on mitigating personal bias. As we progressed, we realized that our attempts to entirely remove bias would be in vain. Through our creative decisions, we would inevitably be reflected in the project.

Pursuing something negatively defined like trying to be unbiased intuitively made less sense to us than pursuing truth. Our job as filmmakers became determining what is real. There's overlap between mitigating bias and pursuing truth, but we found that focusing on the pursuit of truth was a useful reframing of objectives.

In a lot of cases, dialogue in interviews veered away from what was empirically falsifiable. In those cases, we became curators of opinions. We aimed to be comprehensive and fair in our representation of perspectives. It became up to the public to discern the truth.

In March of 2022 Where the Waters Meet was screened for the community in the Barrick auditorium at StFX University. There was an additional screening done in lab for the aquatic resources department. The full film is available to watch here.

We're thankful to the following for making this project possible: