Hidden away in the canyons of a top-secret military base on the edge of the Mojave Desert is the largest concentration of rock art in North America, perhaps in the world. Created thousands of years ago by a now-vanished culture, it represents the oldest art in California. Talking Stone explores these remote canyons and the mysteries surrounding these indelible images. Who created these rock art images? Why did they create these images? What does that say about their culture in the grand scheme of humanity? All of these questions are examined in further detail.
Screening time: Saturday, May 16, 5:00 pm (Session 4)
Length: 54 min.
Country: USA
Language: English
Director: Paul Goldsmith
Producer: Paul Goldsmith
Producer Web site: paulgoldsmithasc.com
Distributor: DER (USA) Bradshaw Foundation
Distributor Web site: paulgoldsmithasc.com
Awards/Selections: N/A
This film portrays the endeavors of a group of Iranian master musicians who are trying to locate, restore and record a repertoire of compositions attributed to Abd al-Qadir Maraghi, a prominent composer who lived six centuries ago and greatly influenced Middle Eastern classical music. During their six-year journey, the group finally is able to reassemble a major portion of these works by sifting through manuscripts and other documents deeply buried in the archives of Persian and Turkish musical history. The film follows these musicians as they rediscover and then record forgotten music that deepens the roots of Persian music as far back as six centuries.
Screening time: Saturday, May 16, 3:19 pm (Session 3)
Length: 83 min.
Country: Iran
Language: Persian with English subtitles
Director: Mojtaba Mirtahmasb
Producer: Mojtaba Mirtahmasb
Producer Web site: None
Distributor: None
Distributor Web site: None
Awards/Selections: N/A
Josiah Henson’s 1849 autobiography inspired Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and galvanized abolitionists. But for 30 years, he was enslaved here, on what was once a 270-acre plantation run by Isaac Riley. An acre of land and an old house are all that remain. Time Team America descends on an upscale Washington, DC, suburb, digging for clues beneath the manicured lawn and peeling back layers of the old kitchen floor to tell the story of one of the most important Americans of the Nineteenth Century.
Screening time: Sunday, May 17, 4:49 pm (Session 8)
Length: 53 min.
Country: USA
Language: English
Director: Bruce Barrow
Producer: Dave Davis
Producer Web site: http://www.opb.org
Distributor: PBS
Distributor Web site: http://www.pbs.org/time-team/explore-the-sites/search-josiah-henson/
Awards/Selections:
Search for Josiah Henson: The Man Behind the Story of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a Time Team America Presentation aired in June 2014 on OPB TV and in August 2014 on PBS. Footage was screened at the TAC Film Festival in May 2014. The Time Team America website won a silver award from W3 for Website Features – Video or Motion Graphics.
Follow Afghan archaeologist Qadir Temori as he races against time to save a 5,000-year-old archaeological site in Afghanistan from imminent demolition. A Chinese state-owned mining company is closing in on the ancient site, eager to harvest $100 billion dollars worth of copper buried directly beneath the archaeological ruins. Only 10 percent of Mes Aynak has been excavated, though, and some believe future discoveries at the site have the potential to redefine the history of Afghanistan and the history of Buddhism itself. Qadir Temori and his fellow Afghan archaeologists face what seems an impossible battle against the Chinese, the Taliban and local politics to save their cultural heritage from likely erasure.
Screening time: Friday, May 15, 8:13 pm (Session 1)
Length: 62 min.
Country: Afghanistan
Language: English subtitles
Director: Brent E. Huffman
Producer: Brent E. Huffman
Producer Web site: www.savingmesaynak.com
Distributor: None
Distributor Web site: None
Awards/Selections:
Selected for World Premiere at IDFA 2014
This documentary relives the moment in history when the decision was taken to build the aqueduct of Nemausus (modern Nimes in France). An engineer is commissioned to decide where to build the town and to provide it with an aqueduct to guarantee a water supply. Isaac Moreno allows the viewer to see all this through the eyes of that engineer. By means of precise and elaborate computer simulations, combined with superb pictures taken from the air and land, he helps us understand the structures and engineering needed to turn the Nimes aqueduct into a reality. Armed with that knowledge, he then takes us on a dizzying journey across the whole Roman Empire, where other breathtaking structures were built and challenges met with amazing technical solutions.
Screening time: Sunday, May 17, 1:58 pm (Session 7)
Length: 57 min.
Country: Spain
Language: English
Director: José Antonio Muñiz
Producer: José Antonio Muñiz
Producer Web site: www.digvision.com.es
Distributor: ONZA Partners
Distributor Web site: www.onzapartners.com
Awards/Selections:
Currently at FICAB (Festival International de Cine Arqueologico del Bidasoa). It will be screened on November the 21st, 2014.
This documentary explores a stunning new archaeological find that revolutionizes our understanding of Jesus, his earliest followers and the birth of Christianity. In 2010, using a specialized robotic camera developed in Toronto, film maker Simcha Jacobovici worked with archaeologists, geologists and forensic anthropologists to explore a sealed, previously unexcavated First Century tomb in Jerusalem. The limestone ossuaries, or bone boxes, they uncovered and their associated carvings of Jonah, the big fish, and a Greek inscription are some of the most important archaeological discoveries ever made. The film offers a dramatic witness to what the people who knew Jesus actually believed. It is the firsthand account of how the discovery happened and what it means. Part archaeological adventure, part Biblical history, part forensic science, part theological controversy, The Resurrection Tomb Mystery is a story that continues to reverberate around the world.
Screening time: Friday, May 15, 7:20 pm (Session 1)
Length: 44 min.
Country: Canada
Language: English
Director: Simcha Jacobovici
Producer: Simcha Jacobovici & Felix Golubev
Producer Web site: http://www.apltd.ca
Distributor: None
Distributor Web site: None
Awards/Selections:
Broadcast:
April 12, 2012 - Discovery Channel (US)
April 12, 2012 - VisionTV (Canada, as “The Jesus Discovery”)
Festivals:
Official Selection, 34th International Festival of Archaeological Film, Rovereto Italy
Awards:
Gold Dolphin, Science & Knowledge, Cannes Corporate Media & TV Awards
Gold Plaque, Documentary: Science/Nature, Chicago International Film Festival Television Awards
Gold WorldMedal, Most Innovative Production, New York Festivals
Silver Telly Award, Documentary Program, Telly Awards
In Pompeii and diverse locations in Italy, some archaeological discoveries, in their different ways, serve to improve our knowledge of perfumes produced and enjoyed in Classical times. Jean-Pierre Brun, an archaeologist from the Jean Berard Center in Naples, and Xavier Fernandez, a chemist from the Chemistry Laboratory of Bioactive Molecules and Fragrances in Nice, gather their competencies and work together to reconstitute the fragrances of a perfume thousands of years old, based on Italian roses. This perfume has an intricate history and its unique existence gives an insight into the lives and the overall culture of Roman people in antiquity.
Screening time: Saturday, May 16, 8:16 pm (Session 5)
Length: 28 min.
Country: France
Language: French with English subtitles
Director: Luc Ronat
Producer: CNRS Images
Producer Web site: None
Distributor: CNRS Images
Distributor Web site: None
Awards/Selections: N/A
Experience in this film an exceptional archaeological investigation and a breathtaking dive into the heart of the wreck of La Lune, flagship of Louis XIV. La Lune sank off Toulon in November 1664, when the ship returned from an expedition to the North African coast with nearly a thousand men on board, ordinary seamen and men of high noble lineage. But under pressure from the Sun King and his entourage, who intended to hide the tragedy, La Lune was quickly forgotten. Until now. Nearly twenty years after its discovery, technological innovations finally allow the exploration of the ship. Michel L'Hotu, director of underwater archaeological research at the Ministry of Culture and Communication, leads the exploration of this unique wreck. The documentary takes viewers on a double adventure: a historical epic set at the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV and an archaeological exploration.
Screening time: Saturday, May 16, 1:45 pm (Session 3)
Length: 55 min.
Country: France
Language: English
Director: Pascal Guérin et Herlé Jouon
Producer: ARTE France et Grand Angle productions
Producer Web site: www.arte-tv.com
Distributor: None
Distributor Web site: None
Awards/Selections: N/A
The Romance of the Far Fur Country was released in 1920, two years before the legendary film Nanook of the North. Upon rediscovering the documentary in a British archive, another film crew begins a journey to bring this lost film back to life, taking it to the northern communities where the film was originally shot. As people watch the footage from 1919, something special happens. Images come to life; people recognize their family members, their landscapes and their lost traditions. Contrasting then and now, On the Trail of the Far Fur Country is an intimate portrait of Canada and its Aboriginal people and a chronicle of how life in the North has changed in the last century.
Screening time: Sunday, May 17, 12:00 pm (Session 6)
Length: 81 min.
Country: Canada
Language: English
Director: Kevin Nikkel
Producer: Kevin Nikkel
Producer Web site: www.fivedoorfilms.com
Distributor: Five Door Films
Distributor Web site: www.fivedoorfilms.com
Awards/Selections: N/A
The Tarahumara of Chihuahua, Mexico, are a people at the mercy of a landscape in transformation; standing on the brink of an encroaching reality, one in which the age-old fears of the inhabitants are being realized. A hamlet has survived, perched in a remote location where its children can grow up and the elderly can die and remain in place. Here is where the inhabitants of this little hamlet, deep in the heart of Mexico, rely on each other for survival. Resources are tough and challenging to obtain in such a remote location. Join the film makers as they capture the story of this place to discover how the inhabitants have survived in the face of resort development by newcomers and to give outsiders an insight into their world.
Screening time: Saturday, May 16, 6:03 pm (Session 4)
Length: 85 min.
Country: Mexico
Language: Spanish with English subtitles
Director: Michelle Ibavaen
Producer: Enedina Molina Mendoza
Producer Web site: None
Distributor: Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía
Distributor Web site: http://www.imcine.gob.mx/
Awards/Selections:
Mejor Documental Internacional del VII Fesatival Internacional de Cine Ecozine, Espana, 2014
Mejor Pelicula Internacional del Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival, Nepal, 2013.
Mencion Honorifica por parte del Juardo, Filmoteca de la UNAM Mexico, 2013
Mencion Especial del Prix Sequences du Documanentairea del Festival Presence Autochtone, Canada, 2013.
Premio del Jurado del Trento Film Festival, Italy, 2013
Mejor Documental Internacional y Premio del Publico del Festival Internacional De Cine y Medio Ambiente,Cinema Paneta,Mexico,2013.
Mejoe Documental Medio Ambiental del Festival Internacional de Cine Barranquilla, Colombia, 2013.
Mejor Documental Medio Ambiental del Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia, Mexico, 2012
Mencion Especial en Premio FEISAL del XXVII Festival International de Cine en Guadalajara, Mexico, 2012.
This film is a documentary about a controversial Maya deity who personifies good and evil simultaneously. Maximon, also known as a San Simon, or the drinking and smoking saint of Guatemala, is a mixture of ancient Maya beliefs and Christianity. The movie concentrates on the people who surround Maximon with their strong personalities, opinions and faith. Maximon is honored and loved because he performs miracles, but he is also feared and despised because he is used to cast curses that can result in death. Giving us a rare view into the rituals and fiestas honoring Maximon, the documentary leads us on a journey that is both joyous and terrifying. Ultimately Maximon transcends the duality of good and evil, reflecting the Maya cosmovision in which everything in the universe co-exists.
Screening time: Saturday, May 16, 12:23 pm (Session 2)
Length: 66 min.
Country: Guatemala
Language: Spanish with English subtitles
Director: Robert Flanagan
Producer: Suzan AL-Doghachi
Producer Web site: www.maximonmovie.com
Distributor: AJAX FILMS
Distributor Web site: www.maximonmovie.com
Awards/Selections:
Cooperacion Espanola Antigua Guatemala - world premiere February 5th, 2014
Casa del Rio, Antigua Guatemala - February 15th, 2014
Cenrto Cultural de Espana en Guatemala, Guatemala City - March 11th, 2014
Cooperacion Espanola Antigua Guatemala - April 9th, 2014
Centro Cultural Casa No’j, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala - August 28th, 2014
Galeria, Panachajel, Guatemala - August 29th 2014