Aqua

In 1913, William Mulholland finished building the Los Angeles Aqueduct – a 233-mile engineering masterwork transporting water from the Owens Valley, across the desert, to a barren corner of California that would become the home of filmmaking. Over one hundred years later, award-winning Italian author and filmmaker Chiara Barzini traces the geography of the aqueduct, from its source, across the desert, to the city that it helped into existence, all while reckoning with her personal history with the landscape. From the ‘fake’ waters of the Universal Studios Jaws attraction to Salton Sea – California’s largest lake and ‘the only man-made mistake visible from space’ – ‘Aqua’ explores how water, and its absence, shaped both a modern landscape and the history of film.