White Water is an hybrid project: a novel book and a short movie filmed primarily in Liberty City, Miami. This event will screen the movie, followed by an introduction on the novel and the movie.

In between poetry, reality and fiction, the book and the movie tell the story of June, a young man born and raised in Liberty City, and Ella, a foreign young woman teaching writing practice there. They evolve apart and are not meant to meet. Their differences are based on education, social class, ethnicities and gender. However, a strange power seems to link them together.

This project is the result of over a month worth of research, photographs, filming sessions, interviews and writing practices in Liberty City and the surrounding neighborhoods. Questioning boundaries of black ethnicity, masculine reality, the strong connection some people have with the ocean or the water. The book is a hybrid novel inserting interviews’ fragments and photographs, while the movie mixes up documentary film captures with actor-played-scenes. How can narration be transfigured with these elements? The whole project doesn’t really try to answer this question, but is more a poetic attempt to reveal both the brutality and the beauty of reality in a context of the Liberty City neighbourhood in present day.

White Water (book & movie) is starring:
Steven Barkley as June actor (Liberty City, MIA)
Cornell Thomas as June voice (Liberty City, MIA)
Edwige Redouane as Ella actress (Brussels, BE)
Aline Winant as Ella voice (Montreal, CA)
Riasia, Rianha and Sean Coffie as the kids.(Liberty CIty, MIA)
Nana Sakyi (AHCAC, MIA)
James (Liberty City, MIA)
Rod (Liberty City, MIA)
& people from the store on NW54th street

written & directed by Elena Bollette (Brussels, BE)
Instagram: @whitewaterstory

WHERE?
@CIC
1951 Northwest 7th Avenue
#SUITE 600

WHEN?
On Wednesday
02.13.19