"We can live without SUVs, but we can't live without water." - Amy Hart, Filmmaker.

Amy Hart makes second Saratoga Lake swim to raise funds for documentary on world water issues  

By DANIELLE T. FURFARO, Staff writer

Saratoga, NY -- The crowd watching a sneak preview of the documentary "Water Colors: Portraits of the Global Water Crisis" had paid $5 for brunch, but the water flowed freely, provided in a number of carafes on the tables.

Meanwhile, on the screen, a group of South African citizens were rioting because they couldn't afford the country's new prepaid water meter system.

With her work-in-progress film about clean-water shortages throughout the world, director Amy Hart aims to educate people about the problems that have led to thousands of deaths per day in Third World countries.

"We certainly do have the technology and means to supply everybody with clean water," Hart said. "It's a matter of political will and priority. No one should be kept from getting clean water, whether they can afford it or not."

On Saturday, Hart held her second annual fund-raiser for the film, in which she and a dozen volunteers swam the length of Saratoga Lake.

Last year's fund-raiser collected about $2,500, which Hart used to fund a trip for herself and a cameraman to go to Africa. With the proceeds of this event, which have not yet been tabulated, Hart hopes to raise enough to go to India to film the plight there.

Hart, a producer of television programs on health issues for the School of Public Health at the State University of New York, said she chose water as the subject of her first feature film because it is such a massive world problem.

"I wanted to make a documentary about a global issue," said Hart. "I realized that no other issue can be addressed without first addressing water. Issues such as AIDS, women's equality, poverty, population control and development are all greatly affected by water."

Not all of the proceeds are going toward Hart's film. Some of the money will go to the African Reflections Foundation, a locally based nonprofit that raises money to drill wells in poor, rural areas in Africa. Within the next year, the organization hopes to have enough money to purchase its own drilling equipment, so it doesn't have to keep paying someone else to do the work, said ARF Executive Director Mamadou Ahmed Diomande.

"We can go to the moon, yet people die from a lack of water," said Diomande, 43, a native of the Ivory Coast. "That is unacceptable."

Aubrey Fleszar, 27, and her sister Sara Fleszar, 24, both of Troy, said they volunteered to swim in the hopes of making Americans more aware of water troubles in other parts of the world.

"A lot of Americans are not aware of the issue," said Aubrey Fleszar, who regularly participates in charity athletic events. "Right now, we are so concerned with rising prices of gas and oil, but water is so much more important."

Schenectady Daily Gazette, August 21, 2005

Hoping For a Ripple Affect

Filmmaker Hopes Long Swim Will Draw Attention to Crisis

Stillwater (Saratoga, NY) -- The water Amy Hart wrung out of her swimsuit Saturday is more than many in Third World countries have available in a day.

Hart, of East Greenbush, is an independent filmmaker and Saturday morning she swam across Saratoga Lake to raise awareness of the water crisis many nations face.

She finished her swim at Brown’s Beach, taking more than two hours and raising money for her documentary in progress which is on the shortage of adequate water in developing nations.

“We did it!” said Hart, to a group of people waiting for her on the beach. “People go through a lot more than that to get water.”

Still catching her breath, camera crews of area televisions and newspapers surrounded her. She didn’t hesitate to talk about an issue that drives her to make trips to Africa to film villages where people walk miles to obtain water.

"And it's not even clean water," said Hart, wrapped in a towel adorned with sea animals. "The water issue has gone way under the radar and it's a shame because if there's one thing you need to survive it's water."

Janet Davignon, one of the 12 swimmers who joined Hart, said she never gave much thought to the water problems in the world until approached by Hart.

"It's something I hadn't thought about until a couple of weeks ago..." Davignon said. "It's not well publicized."

Hart said the point of her film is educating the world to the problems people have obtaining access to clean, safe water.

She said she went to the United Nations on World Water Day asking officials about the commemoration. The U.N. representatives she spoke to, and people working nearby, were unaware of World Water Day, she said.

HOPING FOR IMPROVEMENT

She said she would like to document differences in the quality of life resulting from the construction of wells. In Third World countries where supplies are inadequate an extraordinary amount of effort is spent acquiring water.

"There are girls who can't get an education because they have to carry water all day," Hart said. The lack of adequate water supply has an impact on the AIDS epidemic in Africa as well, Hart said, resulting in dysentery when medication is taken with dirty water.

Mamadou Diomonde, the executive director of African Reflections Foundation, a nonprofit group that has helped build wells in Africa, is now collaborating with Hart. African Reflections set up tables with statues and other African goods for sale to fund the organization's charitable projects.

Diomande, who grew up in the Ivory Coast, says the water problem is devastating his home country.

'It's an issue we feel blinded by," Diomande said. "When Amy approached us, it made us feel very fortunate to have a local person who was attached to the water issue."

Swim Puts Spotlight on World’s Water Woes

Independent filmmaker Amy Hart speaks to the press gathered on the shores of Brown’s Beach in Stillwater on Saturday morning after she successfully swam a 3-mile distance across Saratoga Lake.

By BRENDAN McGARRY

STILLWATER (Saratoga, NY) -- Despite a bluish nose and goose bumps dotting her arms, independent filmmaker Amy Hart whooped and slapped high fives as she waded ashore after swimming across a cold and choppy Saratoga Lake on Saturday morning.

Hart organized the three-mile swim, which took about two hours, to raise awareness about what she described as a global water crisis.

"We kind of took the scenic route," Hart said at the finish line, Brown's Beach. "There was a fair bit of weeds, but it was great."

Unlike last year, when Hart swam alone, about a dozen swimmers participated in the event, which sought to raise money to continue production of Hart's documentary about the water crisis and to construct wells in southern Africa.

More than 6,000 children die from water-related diseases every day, according to Hart, and more than 1 billion people in the world still lack access to clean water.

"The water issue has gone way under the radar," she said.

In March, the United Nations kicked off a decade-long "Water for Life" program, which seeks to reduce by half the estimated 1.4 billion people in the world without access to safe drinking water.

Hart began work on a documentary last year, travelling to Malawi, Tanzania and South Africa to chronicle local hardships from lack of access to clean water.

She has finished about 20 minutes of the film, and she plans to return in the fall to continue work on what she hopes will eventually become a full 90-minute documentary.

She chose the countries because "more people are dying in Africa of water-related diseases." But, she added, the issue exists everywhere, noting mercury pollution right here in the Adirondack watershed.

In South Africa, a country of high unemployment and widespread AIDS, privatization of water services caused hundreds of thousands of families to lose water after companies installed prepaid water meters, Hart said.

Filming one village woman in Malawi, Hart found it difficult to see a little boy the woman was caring for wearing a T-shirt with an American flag on it, and notice a can bearing a USA emblem and a scarf marked with a Coca Cola insignia…but despite all of these symbols, the woman had absolutely no food for herself or the boy, simply because the village had no water.

Malawi, she said, is saddled with a $2.3 billion debt to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in development loans – yet it’s the grass roots efforts that seem to be making the most difference in providing water for the poor. A donation to the Fresh Water Project of Malawi of $100 to replace broken well part enabled one African village to provide water to 1,000 people.

Hart partnered for the event with African Reflections, an Albany-based company that works with a sister organization in Africa to construct wells in southern Africa.

"We can go to the moon," said Mamadou Diomande, executive director of the African Reflections Foundation, which was selling African crafts on the beach. "It's just such a shame that people should be dying."

"We can live without SUVs, but we can't live without water," she said.

TIMES UNION Thursday, August 5, 2004

She Dives Right In on Water Issues

East Greenbush, NY - Woman raises funds for film about worldwide water woes by swimming Saratoga Lake

By Christen Deming

Amy Hart spends a lot of time thinking about water - who has it and who doesn't.

“How do we as a human race allow 1 billion people to live without water, and 2 billion people to live without adequate sanitation?” she wonders.

The documentary filmmaker hopes to answer some of those question in her next production on global water issues. To help raise money for the film, Hart plans to swim across Saratoga Lake.

Hart, whose home and production company are based in East Greenbush, was born in Wisconsin and has lived in Hawaii. She has always had a flair for drama and attended Bennington College in Vermont.

After writing plays for various theater groups, Hart created a one-woman show titled Mother Maroon, which told the story of four mothers in four different countries. Hart performed her show at the United Nations International conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt.

It was at the conference when she realized what audience she wanted to serve. “By bringing a performance like this to conferences you bring in an emotional level that really hits them in the heart,” she said. “If you really knew the human suffering, would you really be able to ignore it?”

After working for such film companies as Miramax and New Line, Hart now produces broadcast programs for the School of Public Health at the University at Albany. Recently she won a Telly Award for Excellence in Educational Programming for a program entitled Think Fresh! on promoting fresh fruits and vegetables in low-income communities.

Hart became passionate about water issues while working on a program on water as a public health issue. With her full-length documentary, Hart hopes to raise awareness in the public on water-issues to help bring a solution to the problems. “Not everyone knows all sides of the story - water issues just aren't sexy so they don't always make the news,” she said. “But we all know one thing for sure - we can't live without clean water.”

Filmmaker Dives Into World Water Crisis

By Thomas Dimopoulos

Saratoga Lake, NY - Amy Hart sat at the shoreline of Saratoga Lake and raised her eyes to meet the steely gray sky threatening to dump buckets of rain at any moment.

“We would like some nice, hot weather,” she says.

Hart will be taking the plunge, jumping into Saratoga Lake for a three-mile swim that will reach the Brown's Beach finishing line at 10am where she will be met by a band and a group of well-wishers indulging in playful festivities.

The swim at Saratoga Lake is to raise seed money for traveling abroad where she will film parts of her documentary.

“The reason I am making this documentary on water is the global water crisis,” Hart says. “Over 1 billion people are without clean water and over 2 billion are without sanitation. As a result, 6,00 children die every day. Every day. I thing with all the technology and resources and intelligence we have, we can do a lot more to prevent these deaths. I want to push the question: How, as a human race, do we allow 6,000 children to die every day? Isn't there more we can do?”

At the end of August, Hart travels to South Africa, Malawi, and Tanzania to visit urban slums where tens of thousands of people live in makeshift camps without running water. her travels will eventually include visits to South America and India, as well as doing some filming in the U.S. “We want to show the juxtaposition,” says Hart, thinking cinematically. “A child wakes up in America. He brushes his teeth and takes a shower. He flushes the toilet three times. Mom's in the kitchen with the water running and dad's got the sprinkler going and is washing the car. At the same time, a child in Africa is taking his mother's hand and is walking and walking and walking, just to get one cup of muddy water from the well.”

Hart's background is in writing and theater. She gravitated into television and film, where she has worked for the past decade and has produced broadcast programs for the School of Public Health at the University of Albany on public health issues, women's health issues and bio-terrorism preparedness.

While giving theater performances at international U.N. conferences, Hart learned some important lessons on communicating with the international community. “I am using films, stories and plays to tell the story to the general public and to the decision makers.”

After being involved in productions for a number of years, Hart wanted to start making hr own documentaries. She looked at a number of topics until finding the solution.

“Water is the primary need for all people, everywhere on the planet,” says Hart. “The bottom line is I realized you cannot address so many of these other issues, like AIDS, until you address water. So I said: That's it. That's the topic I want to work on. Plus, I'm an Aquarian,” she smiles. “I love water.”

HART PRODUCTIONS, PO Box 286588, New York, NY 10128-0006, USA
1-518-221-0163