- Welcome to POV.
I'm Pete Schwaba, host of PBS Wisconsin's Director's Cut.
Tonight, we bring you a film that tells the story
of an unlikely alliance that takes on the City of Los Angeles
to protect a most precious natural resource:
water.
The film is called Manzanar, Diverted: When Water Becomes Dust.
West of the city of L.A.
is a land that Native Americans called "Payahuunadu,"
which means "land of the flowing water."
This small but beautiful patch of land
has been the setting for some horrifying acts
including racism, colonization, and social injustice.
Indigenous people were victims of a violent cleansing
and driven from the land they loved.
The L.A. Department of Water and Power
diverted and pumped water away
to feed its metropolis some 200 miles away,
forcing ranchers to relocate.
And more recently,
Manzanar was used to confine Japanese prisoners
during World War II.
The film's director Ann Kaneko uses her talent and creativity
to probe the intersection where power impacts the personal.
Kaneko was inspired by the idea of Native Americans,
Japanese American World War II prisoners, and environmentalists
forming an alliance
to defend their water, their history, and their culture.
She found the idea of looking for connections
between Japanese Americans and Native Americans fascinating.
The director says the film
actually started as a humanities project
and grew from there.
She was hesitant to make this a feature-length film
due to the amount of past projects regarding Manzanar,
but she felt her focus on resilience of the human spirit
needed to be told.
Not many Humanities projects end up being broadcast nationwide.
Manzanar, Diverted: When Water Becomes Dust
starts now on PBS Wisconsin,
your home for independent film.