'The Incident at Tower 37'

The allegorical short "The Incident at Tower 37", embedded below, is one of the most moving I've seen in an animation about the harm we do to our environment and eventually to ourselves. Written and directed by Chris Perry* of Northampton, Massachusetts, and produced collaboratively at Hampshire College, the 10:55-minute film relates how a security officer at a water processing tower finally comes to the realization that the siphoning of a lake is destroying an entire ecosystem. It highlights wonderfully very real issues about our access to and consumption of water on Earth.

The film, produced in 2009, uses a Web-based film production and collaboration tool called Helga. It's the product of an enormously talented team.

I hope the short provokes as much thought in you as it has in me.

The Incident at Tower 37 also is available on Vimeo. It has been screened at film festivals around the world for the last two years and has won numerous awards (see the list here). It was released this year on World Water Day.

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* Perry, associate professor of media arts and sciences at Hampshire College, is the founder of Bit Films, which currently is working on an animated short, Caldera, about a young girl with mental illness.

Chris Perry's Blog crumbs (You will find here many posts about the short's creation.) 

Interview with Chris Perry

Animation and Digital Art at Hampshire College

Water.org

Felicity Barringer, "A 21st-Century Water Forecast", The New York Times Green Blog, April 25, 2011

My thanks to GirlFuturist from whom I first learned of this animation.