In 2004, John Waters nar-rat-ed Plagues & Plea-sures on the Salton Sea, a humor-ous doc-u-men-tary on the acci-den-tal lake cre-at-ed in the desert of South-ern Cal-i-for-nia. You can now find the film host-ed on the YouTube chan-nel of KQED, the pub-lic tele-vi-sion out-fit in San Fran-cis-co (where we’re get-ting heavy, heavy rains today). They lay the foun-da-tion for watch-ing the film as fol-lows:
Once known as the “Cal-i-for-nia Riv-iera,” the Salton Sea is now con-sid-ered one of Amer-i-ca’s worst eco-log-i-cal dis-as-ters: a fetid, stag-nant, salty lake, cough-ing up dead fish and birds by the thou-sands. Nar-rat-ed by cult-movie leg-end John Waters, Plagues & Plea-sures is an epic west-ern tale of real estate ven-tures and failed boom-towns.
Find Plagues & Plea-sures on the Salton Sea list-ed in our col-lec-tion, 285 Free Doc-u-men-taries Online.
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Relat-ed Con-tent:
John Waters Makes Hand-made Christ-mas Cards, Says the “Whole Pur-pose of Life is Christ-mas”
An Anti, Anti-Smok-ing Announce-ment from John Waters
John Waters: The Point of Con-tem-po-rary Art
Glob-al Warm-ing: A Free Course from UChica-go Explains Cli-mate Change
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