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Paper short abstract

This experimental multimedia project aims to understand traditional water management practices in Southern Morocco. On paper & Digital8 format this project tracks the traditions of indigenous water management and the socio-political crises of liberalization of wells in the face of climate change.

Paper long abstract

This multimedia project aims to serve as both an ends and a means to understanding traditional water management practices in the arid climate of Southern Morocco. Using different cases from villages in the Tiznit area, this project both documents the traditions of indigenous water management practices as well as the socio-political crises surrounding the liberalization of wells in the face of climate change.

By being filmed on analog Digital 8 format, my ethnographic approach aims to illuminate the filmmakers gaze, highlighting my own sentiments and presence in the process. By choosing a medium that to many is very nostalgic and personal being used in home videos, the film serves the dual purpose of associating a personal connection with the subjects whilst establishing a backdrop of real memory which makes the subject both a reality that is personally affecting. This would accomplish the goal of highlighting our own interpretations by shocking the audience with the ever-familiar via the medium and "home video" shooting style. While the subject is humanized, the grainy dreaminess of the footage also embraces the "filter" through which we view the world. The tape is a representation of a memory which is strikingly familiar as well as a foggy symbolization of viewers' and filmmaker's gaze on the subject.