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Posted: 2/10/2012
Nicolas Boisclair and Alexis de Gheldere collaborate with Quebecois film star Roy Dupuis for this documentary of passionate environmental advocacy. The film is a scathing critique of Hydro Quebec's Romaine River initiative--a plan to construct four dams along the 500-kilometre waterway. It's also a story of devolution from social democratic ideals to greed and environmental destructiveness. Conceived with the nationalization of Quebec's energy resources in 1962, Hydro Quebec was a success story, weaning the province off foreign energy profiteering and fossil fuel use. Things changed with the Levesque government's decision to convert the institution into a profit-making entity; the Romaine project appears in this film as a sad culmination of this shift.
Narrated by Dupuis and framed by the filmmakers' 2008 canoe journey down the river, this movie details the history of Quebec's energy industry, the likely environmental costs of the new project and, most constructively, the plethora of alternatives to hydroelectricity. Solar energy, biomass from agricultural waste, wind and geothermal power--all are thoroughly examined in terms of cost, applicability, and efficiency, and the case for them is overwhelmingly persuasive. Here's a film that goes well beyond critique to a detailed vision of a better future for the land. The evidence is in the scrupulous research, but the power lies in the filmmakers' journey of dedication, and the beautiful images it produces.