Director: Will Parrinello Producers: Rick Tejada-Flores, Vicente Franco, Will Parrinello, Stephen Talbot, Maria Jose Calderon, Sarah Kass
Description:
Water For Life explores the collision of water rights, Indigenous beliefs, and resource extraction through the lives of three community leaders in Central and South America. Our protagonists face harassment and death threats as they fight the powerful forces that threaten the environmental, cultural and economic survival of their communities.
Biography:
Will Parrinello has been making award-winning documentaries for 35 years. His filmography includes Movies Around The World, Mustang – Journey of Transformation; Emile Norman – By His Own Design; Dreaming of Tibet; Little Italy, and Kerouac. With his filmmaking partner John Antonelli, he co-produced / co-directed the multiple Emmy award-winning series The New Environmentalists, narrated by Robert Redford. Parrinello co-produced Summer ’82 – When Zappa Came to Sicily; Sea Change; Roots of Ulu; Yen For Baseball and Sumo Basho.
Rick Tejada-Flores is a filmmaker with more than 40 years of experience.Among his credits are The Fight in the Fields, Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Struggle; Rivera in America; Jasper Johns, Ideas in Paint; and Orozco, Man of Fire. Other films include Race is the Place and The Good War and Those Who Refused to Fight It. His most recent film, My Bolivia – Remembering What I Never Knew, is an intimate investigation into his family’s distinctive Bolivian roots.
Vicente Franco has more than one hundred documentary credits, including the Academy Award nominated films The Most Dangerous Man in America – Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, Freedom on My Mind, and The Barber of Birmingham. He co-directed/co-produced and filmed the Oscar nominated Daughter from Danang.
Stephen Talbot is an Emmy, duPont and Peabody-award winning filmmaker who has produced, written or directed more than 40 documentaries, mainly for public television. His latest is The Movement and the “Madman” for the PBS series American Experience.
Maria Jose Calderon was producer of Covid’s Hidden Toll, the Scripps Howard award-winning film that explores how the absence of mandatory workplace protections puts essential agricultural workers at risk. She was producer/director of The Edge of the Sea; associate producer for The Judge and the General – The Story of Juan Guzman and associate producer of Stable Life – stories of undocumented immigrants who live and work on American racetracks.
Sarah Kass is a seasoned documentary storyteller. She has crafted award-winning programs that have aired on PBS, Discovery Channel, and The History Channel, and she has been the senior writer on multi-episode series. Sarah also works with independent filmmakers as a scriptwriter and story consultant. Sarah has written extensively on human rights issues including 30 short films for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Her environmental and natural history work includes short profile films about heroic grassroots activists who have won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, and she was a lead writer on the landmark, 7-hour Discovery Channel natural history series North America, which takes viewers on a sweeping journey across the continent.
