Once upon a time, in almost every industrial city, countless rivers flowed. We built houses along their banks. Our roads hugged their curves. And their currents fed our mills and factories. 

 

But as cities grew, we polluted rivers so much that they became conduits for deadly waterborne diseases like cholera, which killed hundreds of thousands throughout the 19th century. Our solution two 

centuries ago was to bury rivers underground and merge them with sewer networks. Today, under the city, they still flow, out of sight and out of mind… until now. 

 

This feature documentary takes us on an adventure down below and across the globe, retracing the history of these lost urban rivers by plunging into archival maps and going underground with clandestine urban explorers. We search for the disappeared Rivière St‑Pierre in Montreal, the Garrison Creek in Toronto, the River Tyburn in London and the Bova‑Celato River in Bresica, Italy. There, urban explorers actually work in collaboration with their Italian municipality, surveying fluctuations in water levels and educating citizens about the history of their city’s buried Roman rivers. Along the way, we meet visionary urban thinkers, activists and artists from around the world. 

 

Join us on June 4th 2014 at 7 pm for a special screening of this award-winning documentary and a discussion on Dartmouth's lost river: Saw Mill River, and what we can do to save it.