Armstrong, Franny. Drowned Out. London: Spanner Films, 2002. DVCAM, 75 min. https://youtu.be/B6pj8ZT7HZ4.
Shot over three years by renowned documentary director Franny Armstrong, Drowned Out chronicles a village’s fight against the construction of the Narmada Dam. It tells the true story of an Indian family’s decision to stay at home and drown rather than move to city slums or be relocated to a barren resettlement site with no drinking water. With weeks left, bestselling author Arundhati Roy joins the fight against the dam and asks the difficult questions. Will the water go to poor farmers or to rich industrialists? What happened to the 16 million people displaced by fifty years of dam building? Why should we care? Drowned Out follows the Jalsindhi villagers through hunger strikes, rallies, police brutality and a six year Supreme Court case. It stays with them as the dam fills and the river starts to rise. (Source: Adapted from Spanner Films)
© 2002 Spanner Films. Trailer used with permission.
This film is available at the Rachel Carson Center Library (RCC, 4th floor, Leopoldstrasse 11a, 80802 Munich) for on-site viewing only. For more information, please contact library@rcc.lmu.de
- Baviskar, Amita. In the Belly of the River: Tribal Conflicts over Development in the Narmade Valley. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004.
- Cernea, M. M. "Poverty Risks from Population Displacement in Water Resources Development." Harvard Institute for International Development 355 (1990): 55.
- McDonald-Wilmsen, Brooke, and Michael Webber. "Dams and Displacement: Raising the Standards and Broadening the Research Agenda." Water Alternatives 3, no. 2 (2010): 142.
