Film Overview

"On July 1, 2003 Christopher Swain became the first person to swim the entire 1,243 mile length of the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest. His swim brought stories about the river's disrupted ecosystems and dislocated peoples to over twenty-thousand North American schoolchildren, and to a worldwide media audience of over one billion people.

A group of thirty-plus Northwest filmmakers, led by Andy Norris, followed Swain's swim, and created a modern history of the Great River of the West. The result was a ninety minute film that one reviewer called, "a heart-wrenching tale of a man and a river."

The film includes stunning pre-inundation footage of Celilo and Kettle Falls, as well as a broad spectrum of interviews with tribal members, agency representatives, fishers, authors, nonprofit leaders, and citizens who trace the natural history and present-day challenges of the Columbia River in their own words. One educator described it this way: "The interviews weren't just riveting, they made this grown man cry."