New film shows benefits, threats to Russian River

Santa Rosa filmmaker William Sorensen was up to his chest in the Russian River, his camera rolling on a commercial shoot, when his senses told him something was off.

“The water just felt too warm, and it had an odd odor,” Sorensen said of that pivotal August 2007 moment. “There was something in the water right then that wasn’t quite right.”

His ensuing inquiries into the river’s health developed into a yearslong journey that he and his wife, business partner Stella Kwiecinski, pursued with increasing purpose and passion, resulting in a documentary film now being screened around the North Bay to largely enthusiastic response.

Titled “The Russian River: All Rivers - The Value of an American Watershed,” the two-hour film profiles a waterway at risk, describing a history of exploitation by mankind and current threats to the watershed.

But it also highlights the river’s beauty and critical value to wildlife and humans, and considers promising solutions that Sorensen said he hopes will “engage people’s imaginations on the positive side.”

“I think the takeaway,” said Linda Burke, owner of Burke’s Canoe Trips in Forestville, who attended a screening last month, “is it behooves all of us who love and want to protect the river to learn ways of interacting with the river so that it’s here for a very long time.”

Co-produced by Nancy Econome, also of Santa Rosa, the film includes footage from nearly 50 interviews with biologists, policymakers, activists, wine interests and others up and down the West Coast.

It features extensive aerial photography and what viewers say is stunning cinematography that offsets densely informative content.

“I think people will respond to the images and the visuals of it,” said Stephen Fuller-Rowell, co-founder of the Sonoma County Water Coalition, who viewed the film in Monte Rio last fall. “It’s quite skillful in the way they were able to create a piece of work that communicates on multiple levels.”

The filmmakers said their chief goal was to inform a public utterly dependent on the Russian River and inspire a regional discussion about how all of us can participate in managing it better. Most of the screenings include question-and-answer discussions afterward.

Kwiecinski and Sorensen, residents of the area since 1989, said they came to the subject with some degree of environmental awareness but were challenged to find clear, complete information about the state of the watershed.

“It was a real exploration,” Kwiecinski said. “We didn’t come to it thinking, ‘Oh, we have this idea that we want to illustrate.’ We really came to it as, ‘Let’s discover,’ and we did.”

The film’s tag line, “Boom, Bust and Binge - A Morning-After Water Story,” foreshadows a recounting of the many resource-based industry cycles that have taxed the watershed, from logging to gold mining, fur trapping to gravel extraction, urban development to agriculture. It also looks at the diversion of water from the Eel River and the interconnections within the system.

The subject is inherently controversial, and the film’s creators said they sought differing perspectives, particularly where issues related to grape growing are concerned. They also attempted to draw a distinction between vineyard practices that may have greater environmental impacts and growers who are going beyond what others are doing to tread lightly on the earth. The Army Corps of Engineers, which operates Lakes Sonoma and Mendocino, also was involved, the filmmakers said.

“It’s quite an effort on the part of the filmmakers, quite ambitious,” said David Keller, Bay Area director for Friends of the Eel River, who is featured prominently in the film.

Kwiecinski said she was struck by how many people the team talked to who remembered being young and seeing abundant fish in the river and its tributaries - people who would say, “We used to be able to go out there and scoop them up.”

“It’s just really heart-rending to hear those stories,” she said, “and, in a pretty short time have it change.”

Econome said the team was approached repeatedly during production by people who confided they did not know much about the watershed. “This project, we think, sort of fills that void,” she said.

But they also hope to raise awareness about western watersheds generally, with the Russian River as a proxy for waterways facing similar challenges.

“It kind of talks about how critical our watersheds are,” said Don McEnhill, executive director of Russian Riverkeeper, “and kind of looks at the Russian River as a way to look at all rivers - because pretty much every river in the world is facing similar pressures in one way or another.”

More information on the film is available at www.russianriverallrivers.com.