Bloody raids. Merciless pillaging. Loathsome invasions. The Vikings are infamous for their fearsome conquests—but they were also expert seafarers, skilled traders and courageous explorers. They traveled far and wide, crisscrossing the known world from Scandinavia to Europe and Asia, leaving a trail of evidence that suggests they were far from just vicious warriors. Through stunning CGI recreations and careful investigations of archaeological evidence, Vikings Unearthed unravels the secrets of these intrepid adventurers. And now, new evidence is coming to light that these pioneering people may have ventured even farther than we had suspected. Renowned space archaeologist Sarah Parcak takes up the case and is on the trail of the Vikings. What she discovers just might rewrite history.
Screening time: Friday, May 5, 7:10 pm, The Shedd Recital Hall
Length: 113 min.
Country: United Kingdom
Language: English
Director: Harvey Lilley
Producer: Eamon Hardy for WGBH NOVA
Producer Web site: http://www.bbcworldwide.com
Distributor: BBC WorldWide
Distributor Web site: http://www.bbcworldwide.com
This film takes the spectator on the first tracks of the cinematographer through 20,000 years of Paleolithic art. Foolish proposal? Not at all! A new reading of the rock art paintings and engravings reveals numerous cases of stop-action, a fundamental stage of animated film, in the movement of animals represented on walls. Toward the end of the Paleolithic, an incredible mechanism even makes its appearance, seeming to create an animation with a couple of images. This perplexes many cinema experts. But that’s not all. The cave artists apparently were even devoted to the graphic story: a way of telling stories with sounds and images, in immersions as in cinema, but without settling the spectator in a chair. This is an amazing investigation deep into the heart of the mankind’s cultural DNA.
Screening time: Sunday, May 7, 5:35 pm, The Shedd Recital Hall
Length: 54 min.
Country: France
Language: English
Director: Pascal Cuissot and Marc Azema
Producer: MC4 Productions, Jean-Pierre Bailly
Producer Web site: http://en.unifrance.org/directories/company/48006/mc4
Distributor: ZED
Distributor Web site: http://www.zed.fr/en/tv/distribution/catalogue/programme/stone-age-cinema
This is a feature-length experimental documentary exploring the culture of the Moken people of Burma and Thailand. The Moken are a seafaring community and one of the smallest ethnic minority groups in Asia, traditionally spending eight months out of the year in thatch-roofed wooden boats. As these people are wholly reliant upon the sea, their entire belief system revolves around water. Sailing a Sinking Sea weaves a visual and aural tapestry of Moken mythologies and present-day practices. As a viewer you will swim under the sea past fishes and mermaids, sail boats across turquoise waters, land on thirteen different islands, step inside sea shanties on stilts, delve into the minds of shamans, become possessed through the worship of sea gods, dance between lovers, and emerge drenched in Moken mythology.
Screening time: Saturday, May 6, 10:10 am, The Shedd Recital Hall
Length: 65 min.
Country: Thailand
Language: Thai with English subtitles
Director: Olivia Wyatt
Producer: Olivia Wyatt
Producer Web site: http://oliviaowenswyatt.com/Sailing-A-Sinking-Sea-Director-Editor
Distributor: Documentary Educational Resources
Distributor Web site: http://www.der.org/
Prayers Long Silent charts the work of an international team of researchers and conservators as they attempt to restart the conservation of medieval wall paintings in Famagusta, Cyprus. These have suffered from decades of neglect resulting from the island’s political troubles, involving the location of Famagusta within Northern Cyprus, a self-declared state recognized only by Turkey. Amongst the many challenges facing the team are a church where the frescoes are covered in a thick layer of cement, along with the ever-present threat that conservation will again be halted by political pressures.
Screening time: Friday, May 5, 9:17 pm, The Shedd Recital Hall
Length: 27 min.
Country: United Kingdom
Language: English
Director: Dan Frodsham
Producer: Dan Frodsham
Producer Web site: n/a
Distributor: Nanyang Technological University Singapore
Distributor Web site: http://www.ntu.edu.sg/Pages/home.aspx
Tajikistan's biggest annual celebration is the spring festival of Nowruz, literally "New Day." Nowruz marks the beginning of the Persian New Year, which starts at the spring equinox. The roots of the festival are Zoroastrian—the religion of the Persians before they converted to Islam. For the Tajiks, Nowruz represents a festival of friendship and renewal of all living beings. Jumping over the fire on the last Wednesday of the year is practiced by the Tajiks as well. One tradition that has survived in Tajikistan is the gathering of wildflowers by children in the villages. They bring the flowers back and, while wearing colorful attire, walk around the village, knock on people’s doors and present them each with a flower. This happens one week before Nowruz and is an occasion for many old folk songs that are sung by the children during the event.
Screening time: Thursday, May 4, 9:49 pm, The Shedd Recital Hall
Length: 30 min.
Country: Iran
Language: Persian with English subtitles
Director: Mehdi Bemani
Producer: Documentary and Experimental Film Center
Producer Web site: http://defc.ir/en/
Distributor: Documentary and Experimental Film Center
Distributor Web site: http://defc.ir/en/
Naachtun is the last city of the Maya golden age. We know little about it, as archaeologists started to excavate it just a few years ago. The researchers are trying to understand how this city, isolated in the middle of the tropical forest of Guatemala, can have survived for almost 200 years after the collapse of the Maya civilization in surrounding cities In this effort they are shedding new light on the history of the Maya people. Employing ambitious resources, including 4K HD cameras, drones and cutting-edge graphics results in an exciting adventure combined with an in-depth scientific study. This documentary turns into an account of an epic saga.
Screening time: Saturday, May 6, 2:46 pm, The Shedd Recital Hall
Length: 54 min.
Country: France
Language: English
Director: Stephanie Begoin
Producer: Les Films a Cinq
Producer Web site: http://www.filmsacinq.com/en/
Year after year, 40,000 village members, including Sanabhai and his family, migrate to a seasonal saline desert in Gujarat, India. Here, they harvest what they proudly proclaim to be the world’s whitest salt, using the same painstaking, manual techniques as generations before them. Hardship and exploitation loom large in this film, but director Farida Pacha lets this speak for itself, instead fixing her gaze on the poetry and ritual of Sanabhai and his family’s existence. Exquisite camerawork and a haunting score help Pacha expose the austere beauty of the subject.
Screening time: Saturday, May 6, 5:16 pm, The Shedd Recital Hall
Length: 96 min.
Country: India
Language: Gujarati with English subtitles
Director: Farida Pacha
Producer: Farida Pacha
Producer Web site: http://mynameissalt.com/
Distributor: Documentary Educational Resources
Distributor Web site: http://www.der.org/
In this imaginative animated short film, a young Indigenous female street artist named Mia walks through the city streets painting scenes rooted in the supernatural history of her people. Lacking cultural resources and familial connection within the city, she paints these images from intuition and blood memory. She has not heard the stories from her Elders’ lips, but has found her own methods to rediscover them. The alleyways become her sanctuary and secret gallery, and her art comes to life. Mia is pulled into her own transformation via the vessel of a salmon. In the struggle to return home, she traverses through polluted waters and skies, witnessing various forms of industrial violence and imprint that have occurred upon the land.
Screening time: Sunday, May 7, 11:13 pm, The Shedd Recital Hall
Length: 9 min
Country: Canada
Language: English
Director: Amanda Strong and Bracken Hanuse Corlett
Producer: Spotted Fawn Productions Inc
Producer Web site: http://spottedfawnproductions.com/
Distributor: Winnipeg Film Group
Distributor Web site: www.winnipegfilmgroup.com
Awards/Selections:
Regent Park Film Festival, Toronto, Ontario, 2016
Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival, Kassel, Germany, 2016
Underexposed Film Festival, Rock Hill, South Carolina, 2016
Surrey Film Festival, Simon Fraser University, Surrey, British Columbia, 2016
Have you seen “The Ten Commandments” with Charlton Heston? Did you know that in 1923 Cecil B. DeMille made a silent version of “The Ten Commandments”? He shot the film in Santa Barbara County, California, about 150 miles north of Hollywood, and built a huge City of the Pharaoh set. Designed by Paul Iribe, the “Father of Art Deco,” it was the largest set in motion picture history. When filming wrapped, the city mysteriously vanished. In 1982 Peter Brosnan was sitting in a bar and someone told him that there were ancient Egyptian sphinxes buried somewhere in the California Dunes. It sparked his imagination and he embarked on what turned out to be a thirty-year battle to prove the existence of these sphinxes and the discovery of the Lost City, culminating in the world’s first archaeological excavation of a movie set.
Screening time: Sunday, May 6, 11:30 am, The Shedd Recital Hall
Length: 88 min.
Country: USA
Language: English
Director: Peter L. Brosnan
Producer: Daniel J. Coplan
Producer Web site: http://www.lostcitydemille.com
Awards/Selections:
Santa Barbara International Film Festival, 2016
Rhode Island International Film Festival, 2016
Nine historians and archaeologists follow the colonial fort’s 250-year long lineage. Combine scientists with the written record and you have a pretty complete picture. In early 2015, archaeologists from the University of South Carolina’s Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology undertook a month-long excavation of this poorly designed and built colonial fort made of tabby. Fort Frederick in Port Royal, South Carolina, held buried secrets about the site’s long occupation. More than a century after it’s original construction, the crumbling tabby fort remarkably became the site of a monumental event in our nation’s history—the first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation in the Confederated States. The Inevitable Evolution of Fort Frederick is the story of the site’s transformation over the span of three centuries.
Screening time: Saturday, May 6, 4:21 pm, The Shedd Recital Hall
Length: 27 min.
Country: USA
Language: English
Director: Anthony Koelker
Producer: Anthony Koelker
Producer Web site: http://www.koelkerassociates.com/the-inevitable-evolution
Awards/Selections:
Arkhaios Cultural Heritage and Archaeology Film Festival, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, 2016
He was stalked, attacked and left to die alone. Murdered more than 5,000 years ago, Oetzi the Iceman is Europe’s oldest known natural mummy. Miraculously preserved in glacial ice, his remarkably intact remains continue to provide scientists, historians and archaeologists with groundbreaking discoveries about a crucial time in human history. But in order to protect him from contamination, this extraordinary body has been locked away, out of reach, in a frozen crypt—until now. NOVA joins renowned artist paleo-sculptor Gary Staab as he has been granted rare access into the Iceman’s frozen lair. Gary has been charged with creating an exact replica of the mummy, which scientists and the public alike then can study up close and in person. As we see the Iceman’s rebirth from 3D printing, resin, clay, and paint, new revelations about Oetzi’s life and legacy come to light, including surprising secrets hidden in his genetic code.
Screening time: Sunday, May 7, 3:21 pm, The Shedd Recital Hall
Length: 53 min.
Country: USA
Language: English
Director: Bonnie Brennan
Producer: Bonnie Brennan, Paula Apsell, Julia Cort, Chris Schmidt
Producer Web site: www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/iceman-reborn.html
Distributor: PBS
Distributor Web site: www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/iceman-reborn.html