Location
About
They built a boat and launched a movement!
A Kew Ten Film
- Run Time: 84 min., followed by a short intermission and a panel featuring directors Jodie Childers & Dan Messina and Clearwater musicians.
In the 1960s, American folk singer Pete Seeger, with his wife Toshi and friends, carried out an extraordinary plan as a symbol of a cleanup of the polluted Hudson River: building a 108-foot replica of sloops that dotted the waters in the 17th-18th centuries. Down by the Riverside follows the unlikely story of Sloop Clearwater, a boat that launched a movement emulated around the world.
An intimate portrait of Pete, Toshi and the grassroots community they anchored for over 40 years, the film follows their musical and nautical odyssey, showing how an unconventional campaign to save a beloved American waterway prompted a green revolution. The tale of the Clearwater is a parable for our time, offering hope for a fractured nation and revealing how imagination and participation can solve environmental problems, transforming how we relate to the earth, and also to one another.