“Tidewater” explores sunny-day flooding in VA

Local photographer Judy Rolfe said she hopes people who watch her film on flooding in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia will leave engaged enough to act – the way she felt after watching “An Inconvenient Truth” in 2006.

“It was a powerful movie that really started me thinking,” she said of former Vice President Al Gore’s documentary. “We all can be doing something. Filmmaking, that’s what I can do.”

Produced by the American Resilience Project and directed by Roger Sorkin, “Tidewater” is a 40-minute movie that delves into vulnerability to sea-level rise in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia and what local government and the military bodies are doing to fix the $1 billion problem.

The movie will be shown at 7 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 17, in the Rehoboth Beach Film Society’s Cinema Art Theater, 17701 Dartmouth Drive, Lewes. Tickets for the show are $6.

Rolfe, a former photo editor for USA Today, is an assistant producer who helped shoot video and still photography. She has lived in Lewes for over a decade and grew up in Ocean City, Md., where her mother still lives.

Rolfe said she’s been taking photos since she was a teenager and sees film as the perfect medium to get people’s attention. She said “Tidewater” shows local officials, members of the public and military representatives discussing growing concerns about sunny-day flooding and how it will affect the area economically if nothing is done.

It’s a scenario that could occur in Sussex County, Rolfe said, listing off Slaughter Beach Road in Milton, New Road near Canary Creek in Lewes, Route 1 south of Dewey Beach and Oak Orchard as areas that already flood, even with little change in weather conditions.

When Route 1 closes, Rolfe said, she loses the only way to get to her mother’s house without a two-hour detour.

Rolfe said she’s going to continue making films with a message until she can’t. She said she plans to be back in the Norfolk area in November to film a king tide and its associated flooding. Half-joking, she said the people down there know that if she’s in town, it’s not for a good reason.

Following the movie, a discussion will be led by Rolfe, University of Delaware professor of oceanography Dr. Chris Sommerfield and Delaware Coastal Programs planner Danielle Swallow.

For more information on the film, contact Rolfe at FocusedOnEnv@gmail.com.

To buy tickets, go to rehobothfilm.com.