- Living Downstream
About the Film
There was once a village overlooking a river.
The people who lived there were very kind.
These residents, according to parable, began noticing increasing numbers
of drowning people caught in the river’s swift current. And so they went to work devising ever more elaborate technologies to resuscitate them.
So preoccupied were these heroic villagers with rescue and treatment
that they never thought to look upstream to see who was pushing the victims in.
This film is a walk up that river. The river of human cancer.
Raised in small-town Illinois, cancer seems to run in Sandra Steingraber’s family. Sandra was diagnosed with bladder cancer when she was just twenty years old. Her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer when Sandra was in high school. Many of her aunts and uncles have struggled with the disease. One aunt even died from the same form of bladder cancer that Sandra had. But while cancer runs in her family, she cannot say that it runs in her genes. Sandra is adopted. This unusual twist led Sandra to ask what else families have in common besides their DNA. The answer is all around us: our environment.
Based on the acclaimed book by ecologist and cancer survivor Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D., Living Downstream is an eloquent and cinematic feature-length documentary. This poetic 85-minute film follows Sandra during one pivotal year as she travels across North America, working to break the silence about cancer and its environmental links.
As our journey begins, we follow Sandra in her professional life. After a routine cancer screening, Sandra receives some worrying results and is thrust into a period of medical uncertainty. Thus, we begin two journeys with Sandra: the private and the public.
But Sandra is not the only one who is on a journey – the chemicals against which she is fighting are also on the move. We follow these invisible toxins as they migrate to some of the most beautiful places in North America. We see how these chemicals enter our bodies and how, once inside, scientists believe they may be working to cause cancer.
At once Sandra's personal journey and her scientific exploration, Living Downstream is a powerful reminder of the intimate connection between the health of our bodies and the health of our air, land and water.
Living Downstream is produced by The People’s Picture Company, with the support of: The Ceres Trust, Kendeda Sustainability Fund of the Tides Foundation, The Canadian Independent Film and Video Fund, Canada Council for the Arts, Park Foundation, Canadian Auto Workers – Social Justice Fund, The Cancer Prevention Challenge (Ya Ya Sistahs & Bruddahs Too! and Team Vitality), Doris Cadoux & Hal Schwartz, and the Saunders-Matthey Cancer Prevention Coalition.
Living Downstream is currently available for film festival and theatrical screenings. Please contact us if you are interested in screening the film in your community.
“What we love we must protect.”
~ Sandra Steingraber
Order the DVD
The Living Downstream Educational DVD is now available for pre-order.
Learn more here.
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News
August 15, 2010
15 Upcoming Screenings announced!
April 16, 2010
Educational DVD now available for pre-order.
