Film Showing: Shallow Waters: The Public Death of Raymond Zack

How does a mentally ill person drown themselves in a few feet of water on a crowded Memorial Day beach in full view of numerous emergency responders – and no one does a thing?

They all watch, transfixed, as the sand in the man’s hourglass runs out. Succumbing to hypothermia, he loses consciousness within the hour. His body is left to drift back to shore, untouched, for twenty-two minutes.

SHALLOW WATERS is a documentary film that deconstructs the events of that hour in an attempt to understand what happened and why. What were they all waiting for?

The events on Alameda’s Crown Beach scorched the island community.  Now for one day only, filmmaker Jaime Longhi brings his documentary to Alameda  for a community conversation between filmmaker, friends and family of the victim, and all those seeking to understand what happens in moments that seem inexplicable.

Join us for this very special one-time showing. The film screening will be followed by a Q+A with director Jaime Longhi and Alameda residents.

“I saw several films during the festival here and Shallow Waters was by far the most moving documentary among them – I think what makes the film so compelling is that it brings up so many issues: our ethical responsibility to each other; the many ways in which our bureaucracies can fail us; our mistrust of the community services that are supposed to be protecting us. If there is one thing I noticed about how people responded to this film, one question that stood out for everybody, it’s this. We all — every single one of us — walked out of that documentary pondering the most important question of all that is posed by that incident: what would I have done? That includes me.”  -Michael McLeod, Professor at Rollins College / Global Peace Film Festival (Orlando, FL)

Media Alliance is pleased to present a unique screening  of “Shallow Waters”,  followed by a Q&A session with the director of the film (who is flying in for the event) from the East Coast.

The Q&A will be filmed for future release in a DVD.

Description and ticket purchase.