Taking its name from the weapon that David uses to face the giant Goliath, “SlingShot” — a new documentary directed by Paul Lazarus ’76 — follows the story of inventor Dean Kamen, who invented the Slingshot water purifier to tackle the lack of clean drinking water across the globe.
The film will have a special advanced screening tomorrow in Loew Auditorium, followed by a discussion session with Lazarus.
The documentary follows Kamen’s work on the purifier — from its conception to its full realization as viable technology. Currently, 3.4 million people die each year from water-related diseases, the World Health Organization says.
A water purifier is not new technology, but the device’s novelty lies in its ability to recycle energy required to heat the liquid in the distillation process. Slingshot runs on a fraction of the power required for other water purifiers, producing 10 gallons of clean water on less than one kilowatt of electricity. Its compact size and low number of moving parts also make it more accessible to remote villages with limited exposure to electricity and technology.
Lazarus, a director whose repertoire include numerous TV series such as “Pretty Little Liars” and “Ugly Betty,” said the idea of about making the documentary came in 2006, and he began shooting the next year. It wasn’t until 2011, however, that Lazarus and his crew began filming in earnest.
That year, Coca-Cola began sponsoring Kamen’s work on Slingshot. As one of the world’s largest distributor of beverages, Coca-Cola could exponentially increase the likelihood of the machine being implemented around the world, potentially curing a mass global problem, Lazarus said. This was when he said he became more serious about pursuing the project.
“It certainly helped that Coca-Cola entered the story, but it was a leap of faith on my part because I was self-financing,” Lazarus said.
Lazarus followed Kamen across 12 states and three different continents, including Africa, during the course of filming the documentary. One of the most memorable scenes included in the film, he said, is the sight of seeing children in rural Ghana drink the distilled water for the first time.
Through “SlingShot,” Lazarus said he hopes to spread awareness of the use of the device, inspire children about technology and readjust attitudes toward water.
“There is a moment [in the film] where the golf course gets watered, and I wanted people to feel queasy when they saw that,” he said.
In terms of technology, the Slingshot is only at its beginning stage, comparable to the first brick-like cell phone that is on its way to becoming a smartphone, Lazarus said.
For the most part, Lazarus’s past 20 years of directing consisted of capturing planned stories with scripts. Filming “SlingShot” was an entirely different experience, because the story develops according to “what you bump into,” Lazarus said.
“You don’t know that you’re going to go interview people in Ghana, and meet a young woman who’s going to be unbelievably articulate and want to be a doctor,” he said. “And then you realize she’s how you want to start understanding Ghana, and want her to be the voice to tell the story of Ghana, not even Dean Kamen.”
“SlingShot” was not Lazarus’ first attempt at documentary, nor was it his first collaboration with Kamen.
Lazarus had produced several short films covering Kamen’s various initiatives, from Segway to FIRST Robotics Competition. One of these shorts, “FIRST Robotics,” covered a high school robotics competition Kamen created to inspire and encourage young aspiring engineers.
Lazarus described Kamen as an “energy bunny on steroids” who focuses on his work until everything else melts away.
As a feature documentary, “SlingShot” was created on a different scale from these past productions. It took seven years and involved the efforts of hundreds of people.
A short, condensed version of SlingShot was released before the full-length documentary was completed. Watching this brief overview was enough to capture the attention of Hopkins Center film manager Sydney Stowe, who said she found “SlingShot” to be especially relevant.
“For this instance, there were so many connections,” Stowe said. “Lazarus is an alum, the documentary’s about Dean Kamen who has over 400 inventions to his name and lives an hour away, and it’s about water, an easy idea to sell to people.”
“SlingShot” will definitely be an eye-opener, Lazarus said, and a chance to get acquainted with Kamen, an inventor who drives his own jet to travel around the world and lives in a house laid out with secret passages.
“Water issues are so embarrassingly huge, not one movie is going to come close to dealing with the issue,” Lazarus said. “But SlingShot’s going to be a good way to start for people who have no idea what’s going on.
Film professor Joanna Rapf called Lazarus “intuitive” and “insightful”. Lazarus refers to his comedies as balloons with anvils, or comedies with the lightness of balloons but with substance and weight, and although SlingShot is not a comedy, it uses balloons as an element of humor to carry the audience along, Rapf said.
The story has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction appended (8/8/14):
Due to an editing error, the gender of Hopkins Center film manager Sydney Stowe was misstated — she is a woman, and the pronoun used to describe her in the piece has been corrected from "he" to "she." Paul Lazarus ’76, not Stowe, said that the film will be an eye-opener and noted that the film will introduce newcomers to the issue.
