11 August 27 - september 2, 2026 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Some of those stories are tender. A lioness raises her kittens along the Pecos, teaching them to hunt in a landscape that doesn’t for- give slow learners. Some are genuinely funny — a picky hen turkey shrugs off a handsome suitor because she’s far more taken with a trio of brothers working as a team, complete with backup dancers. And some are humbling, like the Texas fat mucket, a native mussel found nowhere else on Earth. “Mussels are the liver of the river,” the film tells us, and Masters builds a whole lov- ing sequence around an animal most of us would mistake for a rock. The hard truths beneath the surface Masters doesn’t let the beauty numb you. The film wades into Texas’ complicated re- lationship with its own water, including the 1904 “rule of capture” — the court ruling that allowed landowners to pump as much groundwater as they pleased, without limits. More than a million wells later, water tables have fallen, and springs that once defined whole communities have gone quiet. Masters sees the root of the problem as structural.”The biggest problem that we have with our rivers is that they are being man- aged by a management system and legal con- straints that are over a century old. That has bogged down our ability to adapt and change our water management with time,” he says. A crescendo of the film is the 2025 Cen- tral Texas floods, which the film handles with real gravity. More than a hundred lives were lost when the Guadalupe River rose nearly 40 feet in the dark. “Ten, twenty, thirty years from now, the Guadalupe flood is going to be slowly — I’m not going to say forgotten — but new generations will come,” he says. “They’re going to want to build on the floodplain. I put that scene in the film a little bit as a warning.” But he pairs the grief with something dis- tinctly Texan: within days, over 20,000 vol- unteers converged on the Guadalupe to help. “We’ve always shouldered the burden of recovery together,” Hawke says, “and always will.” That balance is the film’s emotional en- gine. Masters finds his counterweight in the San Marcos springs, where citizens voted and organized to keep the water flowing. The message lands clean: what we broke, we can mend.”Letting your representatives know that you support water management strategies that support healthy rivers is a great thing,” he says. “At a more personal level, I think we can just use less water on our lawns and in our lives.” That’s ultimately the lesson of “Deep in the Heart 2: Texas Rivers.” The rivers that carved this state, fed its oldest cultures and still run beneath its cities, are neither eternal nor self-sustaining. They need advocates. Masters has made his case, honoring the memories already made along these banks and daring us to protect the memories still waiting to be made.”Deep in the Heart II: Texas Rivers” celebrates its World Premiere on Sept. 22 at 7:30 p.m. at Moody Perfor- mance Hall (2520 Flora St.) with a live perfor- mance of the original score by the Dallas Chamber Symphony, conducted by Richard McKay. Tickets start at $39. A second screen- ing follows on Sept. 23 at the Jane & John Jus- tin Foundation Omni Theater in Fort Worth, with a live Q&A featuring Masters. The film opens in theaters across Texas on Sept. 25. Provided by Fin & Fur Films Fish moves through San Marcos Springs in “Deep in the Heart 2: Texas Rivers.” Hand built not bougHt. Franklins TaTToo and supply 469-904-2665 • 4910 Columbia ave, dallas, TX 75214 proFessional TaTToo supply For pros only Call for your appointment or design commissions today!
