Dominique Marchais

A documentary investigation of the world of French agriculture today through various testimonials. A world that manages to resist the upheavals that it faces – economic, scientific, social – and which continues, for better or for worse, to maintain the link between generations.

Between the Pyrenees and the Atlantic ocean, there are powerful rivers. But corn fields dry them up, and dams are blocking salmons. Human activity upsets the hydrologic circule, and river's biodiversity.

Line watershed falls within the scope of the watershed of the Loire, the source of the Vienna Convention on the Millevaches to the estuary. Watershed, not the Loire river! That is to say the inclined to the sea level, all of the irrigated area, not only the stroke of the river. That is to say, the business areas and wetlands, ditches and highways, meeting rooms and yards. Because water is everywhere, in soil, ground, air, flowing, seeping, evaporating and everywhere connecting the territories between them, indicating their interdependence, making us dream of solidarity. The line of the watershed is not only the geographical dividing line between watersheds but it is also the policy line that connects individuals and groups who have something shared: water, territory, landscape.

No Man Is an Island travels across Europe, from the farmers working together in the Galline Felici cooperative in Sicily to the architects, craftspersons and elected representatives who collaborate in the Swiss Alps and in Austria. All are engaged in politics through their work and all believe in a common destiny. Is the local level the last possible place for a viable utopia?