Interview By Steve Ramos

Andrea Torrice

The cry for a better planet can be heard at a Walnut Hills studio loft. It's here that documentary filmmaker Andrea Torrice has relocated her San Francisco production office. TV audiences across the country watched Torrice's latest film, Rising Waters: Global Warming and the Fate of the Pacific Islands, as part of PBS' recent Earth Day celebrations. Finally, Rising Waters makes its local premiere Friday on WCET-TV 48. For Torrice, who joined her husband Charles Woodman in Cincinnati ten months ago, Friday's broadcast of Rising Waters is her televised introduction to the local community.

"I have a knack for knowing what's coming down the pike," Torrice says, speaking recently at her Clifton home. "But I'm not a straight journalist. What I'm interested in is blending the art with the facts and stories. I'm interested in really good storytelling. I call it directed documentary. I do take a point of view ... My interest is to make people think about things in different ways."

A chance conversation with University of Oklahoma climatologists four years ago introduced Torrice to the negative impact of global warming on the Pacific Islands. At the time, global warming was a relatively unknown environmental theory. But the topic aroused her interest. Two years of research and fundraising followed. By early 1999, Torrice and her three-member crew were ready to head to the Marshall and Samoan Islands in the Pacific.

Rising Waters focuses on El Niño-induced high tides, violent storms and erosion on various Pacific Islands. On the Marshall Islands, she set her camera on graves uprooted by tidal erosion. Ultimately, Rising Waters is about the loss of long-standing Pacific cultures.

Torrice's interest for tackling large, social issues goes back to her freelance producing work at KQED, the San Francisco-based PBS affiliate. Her research skills were honed at The McNeil/Lehrer Newshour. She gained her reputation producing documentaries on Rwanda, women in the porn industry and environmental illness.

"Documentary is the only format left that can give you a deeper and more profound experience about an issue, and that's sorely missing in most material today," Torrice says. "I think people want to have deeper experiences and this is one way."

Recent anti-environmental decisions by the Bush administration have put Rising Waters in the spotlight. Torrice believes in documentary film's ability to make a difference. For the foreseeable future, Cincinnati will serve as Torrice's creative soapbox. ©

E-mail Steve Ramos

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