Coming to theatres today, Friday, May 9: DAMNATION
Travis Rummel and Ben Knight’s exploration of the environmental impact of dam-building premiered earlier this year at SXSW, where it won an audience award. Its fest circuit has included Full Frame, Washington DC’s Environmental fest, and the upcoming DOXA and SF Green fests.
Focused on what environmental activists view as the over-damming of America, Rummel and Knight’s film looks at the growing movement to demolish superfluous or obsolete dams, largely, it’s argued here, to allow for the return of natural spawning cycles for salmon. Beyond that legitimate concern, the filmmakers speak to a range of others affected in various ways by the obstruction of waterways – naturalists, marine biologists, watersport enthusiasts, and Native American communities who have historically been displaced by hydroelectric development. Featuring expert lensing and impassioned participants, the film successfully serves as an environmental rallying cry, but where it shows weakness is in the inclusion of the filmmakers within the film. Knight’s narration is largely unnecessarily, and distractingly personal, while a sequence in which the filmmakers risk arrest by attempting to kayak through a theoretical recreational passage of the Snake Rivery dam adds a manufactured Yes Men/Morgan Spurlock/Michael Moore-like element without need – especially when they already have access to far more interesting subjects who have engaged in more dynamic acts of civil disobedience, such as Earth First’s Mikal Jakubal.
what (not) to doc 