Welcome to “Your Weekly Short,” a LakeFrontRow.com feature that showcases one short from a Wisconsin filmmaker each week, every week. Brace thy face.
The lakes of Wisconsin are plentiful; many Wisconsinites may even lay claim to more than their Minnesotan neighbors. What Michael Neelsen’s documentary short makes clear is that Wisconsin’s plentiful waters are slowly depleting. Oh, and you may not want to drink that tap water, pal. A Milwaukee native, Neelsen made “Not Standing Still: The Degradation of Wisconsin’s Waters” earlier this year, in conjunction with Wisconsin Lakes, Friends of the Central Sands, and the Central Wisconsin Chapter of Trout Unlimited.
The legitimacy of the short’s message, that gradual changes are actively damaging state waters, arrives via high quality animations and several talking heads. Neelsen employs the expertise of Elward Engle, a retired DNR agent, and George Kraft, a water resources professor at UW-Stevens Point, as both relay scientific and personal testimonies in their relationships with Wisconsin’s waters. Before citing data from mean annual rainfall or the sinking stream levels, Engle recalls his fondness for Wisconsin’s rivers as a young boy, all the while casting a line in his wading boots. It’s those affecting touches that Neelsen uses to form a genuine sense of place, a skill he no doubt reproduced in Last Day at Lambeau, a feature-length documentary on the uncomfortable fallout between the state’s Packer fans and quarterback Brett Favre.
“Not Standing Still’s” opening shots of glistening Wisconsin lakes are often mesmerizing, but the short occasionally dips in its overall presentation. Some of cinematographer Beth Skogen’s swaths of dried landscapes look rather grainy, a rough contrast to the tight shots of pristine waters. Of course, it’s difficult to show such a deceptively slow degradation of resources. “Not Standing Still” takes its title from Engle’s assertion that manmade changes in water levels are becoming unavoidable, and Michaela Brutale’s tremendous animations help visualize that growing certainty. In addressing such a sweeping and slow problem, “Not Standing Still” delivers its warning in contrary fashion, urging for great change in a matter of minutes.