DamNation plot
In 1935, President Roosevelt expressed his great admiration and pride at the opening of the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, the largest dam in the world at the time. Thousands more dams would then be built in America; in 2013, the counter stood at 75,371. Director Ben Knights' research takes him across America, where he interviews fanatic supporters and opponents and records the developments surrounding the recent demolition of large dams. From the Elwha Dam, whose $300 million demolition resulted in emotional villagers finally seeing salmon swimming in their river again, to the still-existing Glen Canyon Dam that destroyed a paradise of archaeological treasures in the late 1950s.