RIVERCIDE will show how the agencies charged with protecting our rivers have been progressively under-funded and under-resourced and are failing to adequately monitor water quality and enforce action against polluters. Agriculture is the sector responsible for most river pollution. And yet, nationally, sewage isn’t even the biggest polluter of our rivers. On one day in October, they spilled over a billion litres, which is the equivalent of over 400 Olympic-sized swimming pools of raw sewage.Īs well as releasing faecal bacteria and other nasty chemicals into our water, untreated sewage includes pollution in the form of wet wipes and sanitary towels, leading to build-up of microplastics. The Mogden Sewage Treatment Works in Twickenham spewed 3.5 billion litres of raw sewage into the Thames last year. Last year raw sewage was released into English rivers over 400,000 times, for over 3 million hours. But on our watch, they’ve become open sewers, poisoned by sewage and farm slurry. George Monbiot said: “ Our rivers should be beautiful, complex ecosystems. Armstrong’s film The Age of Stupid, starring Pete Postlethwaite, hit number 1 at the UK box office (by screen average) and won a Guinness World Record for the largest ever premiere. Monbiot’s previous film about wolves drew an audience of over 40 million, whilst his film with Greta Thunberg attracted over 60 million views. Monbiot and Armstrong are great believers in people power and hope to attract a large online audience. Having crowdfunded the costs of production to enable editorial independence, RIVERCIDE has also crowdsourced intelligence on the state of Britain’s rivers – investigating all forms of river pollution. The live film will also be shining a light on the campaigners working tirelessly to turn the fate of our rivers around. Whilst Monbiot will be challenging politicians and confronting polluters, he’ll also be showing how we can turn the situation around and help to restore Britain’s rivers to the natural wonders they ought to be. Production is led by BAFTA-nominated investigative producer Nicola Cutcher ( Syria’s Disappeared: The Case Against Assad), whose work spans Panorama and Newsnight.ĭirector Franny Armstrong is known as one of the pioneers of crowd-funding (her film Age of Stupid raised £900,000 from 330 funders five years before Kickstarter launched), as well as an innovator of independent film distribution techniques described by film analyst Jon Reiss as representing “the future of film, film culture and film distribution and marketing” (“The Age of Stupid is the future of film”, Huffington Post, ) and featured on the front page of the New York Times (“For Independent Filmmakers, Final Cut Is Now Just Step One”, August 13 th 2009). This is gutsy environmental investigative journalism that won’t shy away from delivering hard truths, whilst rigorously reporting the facts. In what the team believes is the world’s first live investigative documentary, RIVERCIDE aims to combine the best of the live stream formats that we’ve all become familiar with during lockdown, and take them to the next level in a pioneering new format. Singer Charlotte Church is collaborating with poet Owen Sheers to compose an original song for RIVERCIDE, which Charlotte will perform live on the show. UK: Thursday 24 th June 2021 – RIVERCIDE – a live investigative documentary on the shocking state of Britain’s rivers, hosted by leading environmental journalist George Monbiot (author of Feral, Out of the Wreckage, presenter of Apocalypse Cow, Guardian columnist) and directed by Grierson-winner Franny Armstrong (McLibel, The Age of Stupid) – will be streamed live on Wednesday 14 July, 7pm BST via a call to action on how the public can help save their local river.
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