This Wednesday, Mar. 27, the Miami student organization Green Oxford will be showing their bi-weekly Green Screen, with this week’s feature being the groundbreaking documentary film Last Call at the Oasis. Directed by Jessica Yu, and with main narration given by the renowned environmental lawyer and activist Erin Brockovich, Last Call at the Oasis draws attention to the increasingly dangerous plight of our planet’s water resources and the pressures placed on water supply by modern society. (It’s only the documentary Brockovich plugged last year when she visited campus.)
The documentary truly hits home for viewers because it has a very powerful message: the resource which life itself depends on is NOT infinite. Water comes so easily to most people, especially in Western society, that little thought is given to the processes it undergoes or the long distances it must travel to come out of our faucets, garden hoses or even such a seemingly effortless process as falling to the earth as rain. Last Call emphasizes that while water does undergo a continuous cycle through out environment, the ways and intensity by which we utilize it have drastic effects on who and where in our atmosphere water is distributed. And the fact is that an increasing amount of water is disappearing from accessible places on earth’s surface. Polar ice caps are melting, lakes and rivers are drying up and once humid moist regions are experiencing unprecedented droughts. As humans consume more and more water at one time, the amount of fresh, usable water diminishes, and is redistributed to salt water of the ocean or atmospheric water vapor that we can neither see nor access.
A powerful quote used in the trailer of the movie illustrates this point of water scarcity well: “We think of it as the air, infinite and inexhaustible. But when you use water in such quantities, that it exceeds the capacity of the system to renew itself… we have a problem.”
Last Call at the Oasis encourages citizens to consider the ways in which they use water everyday, where their water comes from, and what they can do to encourage water conservation and quality protection both in their personal lives and in their greater communities. The film addresses some of society’s greatest culprits in wasting water such as agriculture and urban centers.
To watch this powerful documentary and educate yourself about what you can do to improve the availability of safe, plentiful water today and for the future, come check out the Green Screen this Wednesday at the Oxford Community Arts Center Uptown. The showing will start promptly at 7 p.m.
As “Last Call’s” tagline emphasizes, “You drink it, you swim in it, you survive on it. It’s time you knew the truth about it.”
To watch the trailer for “Last Call at the Oasis”, check out the following link: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/last_call_at_the_oasis/trailers/11163210/
Established 1826 — Oldest College Newspaper West of the Alleghenies