Moshassuck River Project — “The Watershed”
     “The Watershed” is an experimental film project spurred by a series of synchronicities I experienced along the Moshassuck River and at its headwaters. Upon talking with its surrounding Rhode Island community and researching into its industrial history, I became well acquainted with this river as one that is silent, hidden, and forgotten.

    Approximately 70,000 years ago, the melting glaciers in New England carved out the rolling hills of Rhode Island, and as these ancient waters flowed towards the Narragansett Bay, it left behind marshes and floodplanes that nurtured an ecosystem like no other. Moshassuck, meaning “where the moose waters”, was the name given to this old river by the Narragansett people.

   During the industrial revolution, Rhode Island was home to some of American’s very first mills. The construction of these mills required water— water from a river redirected. The construction of a canal from Providence to Worcester collapsed the vast wetlands of the Moshassuck into a thin thread. 

    The culminating film of this project tells the story of a girl who becomes enraptured by the power of this river, after it takes away the life of her sister.

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© Jinhui Zhou 2025