“ Every human is, of course, a waterbody. Water flows in and through us. Our fate flows with that of rivers, and always has. We have largely lost a love-language for rivers….”
from ‘Is a River Alive?’ (published May 2025, UK), Robert Macfarlane, writer, academic, and CPPF ambassador
Why rivers?
Rivers only make up 0.002 per cent of all water on the Earth, yet the human species has coevolved along their banks and within their waters. For millennia, humans have relied on rivers for drinking, food and transportation, yet their importance and vitality have slipped out of view.
Almost everything humans do on land impacts rivers, and their current state reflects what has been done across their catchments over hundreds of years. Some forms of pollution are obvious: plastic bottles and crisp packets bobbing on the water and nestled in riverbeds; wet wipes tangled in overhanging vegetation and streams of murky soil washed from fields or grey wastewater from sewage overflows. But not all pollution is visible and even clear-looking waters can contain everything from microplastics, industrial chemicals to agricultural fertilisers. Untreated sewage spills into most rivers during hard rain, and even legal water treatment leaves a cocktail of household chemicals and pharmaceutical residues intact and unfiltered.
Getting a clear picture of the state of of our rivers is not straightforward, but one thing is clear: our English rivers are not doing so well – many are undrinkable, unswimmable and downright toxic to humans and other species that rely on them. Everyone needs healthy rivers and waterways not only to survive but to thrive.
Why a film festival?
“The crisis in our rivers is one of imagination as well as legislation.”
Robert Macfarlane
Rivers of Film Festival seeks to celebrate and inspire action through fresh perspectives, innovative techniques, and new audiences for river films and rivers themselves. Place-care, creativity and curiosity are at the centre of our thinking about rivers and other water bodies. We share ideas to broaden our moral imagination and provide pathways for achieving clean, healthy rivers for generations to come.
Taking place for twelve days at the end of September and early October in unusual places – museums, community centres, lecture theatres and medieval churches – and never in cinemas, the Rivers of Film Festival seeks to bring rivers, aquatic ecosystems and their guardians into public view. Our festival uses the medium of film in all its forms: documentary, short and long-form films, talks, walks, workshops and more. This includes nine specially commissioned shorts from filmmakers around the UK.
The River Cam is a unifying thread to Cambridge, connecting the town with the chalk headwaters to the south and the fens and sea to the North. Like all rivers, the River Cam is more than that which is visible on the surface; the River Cam is in the ground, the rock, the sky, and all life in this place. Though this film festival is based in this watershed, may it be a true convergence of rivers and action to protect and care for them in the UK and globally.
by James Murray-White & Lucy Michaels
