Nicolas Ploumpidis and Nathanaël Coste studied Geography at the university of Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris, France). Bittersweet waters is their first common long documentary after having directed together two short films in France. They both continue now as filmmakers.
The film in India was conducted in collaboration with the Ecology and Social Sciences Departments of the French Institute of Pondicherry, to which the researchers who instigated and co-wrote this documentary — namely K. Anupama, Olivia Aubriot and Yanni Gunnell — are or were affiliated.
– Olivia Aubriot (co-authors):
Olivia Aubriot, an agro-anthropologist, is researching the social management of water. In her work on the way farmers manage this collective resource, she shows particular interest in irrigation techniques and practices, in how technical and social matters are interlinked and in the territorial dimension of water management. Her PhD centred on a village irrigation system in the low mountains of Central Nepal. She then worked on the theme of water rights, and extended her fieldwork to South India (Tamil Nadu). Her work now once again focuses on the Himalayas, within a multidisciplinary project called PAPRIKA, alongside glaciologists, hydrologists, climate specialists. The project addresses the impact of climate change on the snow and ice cover, water availability and the use of the resource by the people.
– Yanni Gunnell (co-authors):
Yanni Gunnell is professor of physical geography at the université Lumière–Lyon 2 in Lyon, France, and honorary member of the Institut Universitaire de France. His research focuses on reconstructing landscape histories, analyzing disturbance regimes in continental ecosystems, and quantifying erosion and sediment budgets from catchment to continent. He has worked extensively in southern India on geomorphology and natural resources and has recently co-published a Report in the journal Science on the early occupation near Madras of a riverine habitat by hominins conversant with stone tool technologies in most ways identical to early palaeolithic occurrences found in East Africa.
– Anupama Krishnamurthy (co-authors):
Anupama Krishnamurthy is a Palynologist with a physics backgound, specialized in quantitative pollen analyses. in Southern India. Her specializations include, aerobiology, the subject area of her PhD thesis and Quaternary Palynology with a special focus on the late Holocene period and the unique use of sediment records from ancient irrigation reservoir systems (tanks) to reconstruct past environment history. She prefers to work in a multidisciplinary manner with collaborators and partners from different fields. Her current interests include, Melissopalynology and archeobotany.
Eaux douces, Eaux amères Bittersweet Waters 