Some 350,000 years ago, a different human population dominated the world. Despite harsh Ice Age conditions, these people managed to adapt and to rule over the animal kingdom. They were the Neanderthals. Over thousands of years, these gatherers-hunters built know-how and developed beliefs and an entire culture. But around 30,000 years ago, these men, women and children disappeared forever. That disappearance remains a mystery. Many hypotheses have been offered to explain this disappearance, including genocide, epidemics, climate change, consanguinity, and gene dilution. In order to elucidate the enigma, this ambitious one-off film unfolds as a crime investigation, illustrated through docudrama and computer-generated imagery. It takes us around the world to the forensic labs and to the main regions the Neanderthals inhabited. Who were the disappearees? What was their culture? What relations had they with modern humans? What really happened to them?
Screening time: 10:37 AM - 12:16 PM, Saturday, May 4, 2019
Length: 98 mins.
Country: France
Language: French with English subtitles
Director: Thomas Cirotteau
Distributor: Lucky You (Robert Salvestrin)
Born in Zakroczym, Poland, in 1927, Holocaust survivor Joe Engel was taken by the Nazis at 14 and never saw his parents again. Now 90 years old, Joe is an embodiment of living history and spends his retirement years helping to ensure that the Holocaust will never be forgotten. From the overwhelming despair of the Warsaw Ghetto, to the shroud of unceasing death and suffering that enveloped Birkenau and Auschwitz, to his escape from a death train at 17 and his covert work as a freedom fighter, Joe personally takes us on his vivid journey to hell and back, in a story of faith, renewal and redemption. Joe Engel, with an unwavering will to live, overcame unimaginable horrors to become a treasured citizen, community leader, teacher, and philanthropist.
Screening time: 2:29-3:17 PM, Saturday, May 4, 2019
Length: 48 mins.
Country: USA
Language: English
Director: Ron Small
Producer: Ron Small
Distributor: Dreamscape Media,LLC
Directed and Produced by Justin Zimmerman for Bricker-Down Productions, The Titanic of Southampton traces the lasting and haunting effects of the Titanic disaster on the city where the Titanic was built and from which much of its crew hailed—Southampton—a century later. Focusing on interviews with the son of the last Titanic survivor and a leading local historian, TTOS delves into history and tragedy using never-before-seen documents, breathtaking photography and intimate remembrances. Shot in pristine HD by award-winning cinematographer Tory Maurer, scored by award-winning composer John W. Snyder and executive-produced by Kimberly Rose Zimmerman for Rescate Bison Productions, TTOS is a powerful meditation on tragedy, culture, class, and loss.
Screening time: 3:30-3:44 PM, Sunday, May 5, 2019
Length: 13 mins.
Country: USA
Language: English
Director: Justin Zimmerman
Producer: Kimberly Rose Zimmerman
Distributor: Rescate Bison Productions
In the rocky highlands of Jordan and the deserts of Saudi Arabia lie the remains of two remarkable city-states, Petra and Hegra, both built by the Nabataeans over 2,000 years ago. The story of their lost kingdom has faded from history, but thanks to ancient inscriptions and recent discoveries, these rock tombs and temples finally are disclosing profound secrets as to the Nabataeans' way of life. Join us as we enter these sacred sites, carved out of solid rock cliffs, and reveal a civilization where women wielded unrivaled power for centuries.
Screening time: 5:09-6:10 PM, Saturday, May 4, 2019
Length: 61 mins.
Country: USA
Language: English
Director: Stephen Rooke
Producer: Tim Evans, David Royle, David Ryan, Stephen Rooke
Distributor: Smithsonian Channel
Situated in the heart of the Peruvian Andes, 160 kilometers north of Cuzco, Choquequirao is one of the greatest achievements of Inca architecture. Standing at an altitude of over 3000 meters, Choquequirao overlooks one of the deepest canyons in the world. In the 15th century, the Incas truncated the mountain with only the strength of their arms to build this spectacular architectural ensemble. Why did they deploy such an effort? Why did they want to etch the mark of their civilization so deeply into this steep landscape? French and Peruvian archaeologists believe that they now have found the solution to this mystery. Choquequirao may correspond to a sacred geography—to a worldview inscribed in the Andean landscape.
Screening time: 11:23-11:50 AM, Sunday, May 5, 2019
Length: 27 mins.
Country: France
Language: English
Director: Agnes Molia & Nathalie LaVille
Producer: Tournez S’il Vous Plaît
Distributor: Arte France
This documentary recreates the historical moment when it was decided to build a Roman aqueduct. An engineer received the order to choose a location for a town and to provide it with an aqueduct to guarantee its water supply. Isaac Moreno puts you in that engineer’s shoes. Using precise and elaborate computer simulations combined with superb surface and aerial pictures, he helps you understand the work and the engineering needed to build many of the ancient world’s most spectacular water supply systems. The techniques the Romans used to cross valleys, dig through mountains and decant the water will be clearly seen.
To end with, viewers will see the spectacular arches of the aqueducts of Tarragona and Segovia, the latter being the largest Roman civil engineering project on the Iberian Peninsula. Isaac Moreno will explain the reason it was built, showing us how to identify the Roman sections and those that have been added since and explaining the need and correct way to preserve this piece of true world heritage.This documentary series describes the ability of the Romans to accept and assimilate knowledge, no matter where it came from, and then perfect it in applying knowledge and resources to the construction of prodigious structures that were designed to create extraordinary cities.
Screening time: 12:30-1:21 PM, Saturday, May 4, 2019
Length: 50 mins.
Country: Spain
Language: English
Director: JOSE ANTONIO MUÑIZ
Producer: JOSE ANTONIO MUÑIZ & JOSE ANTONIO SÁNCHEZ DE LEÓN
Distributor: ONZA PARTNERS
Scattered all over the mountainous region of northern Iraq, ancient Mesopotamian rock art is lately being carefully investigated by researchers from Heidelberg University, Germany, under the direction of Prof. Dr. Peter A. Miglus. In 2016, the Rock Art in Iraqi Kurdistan Project applied new methods to document the rock-hewn tombs there and the reliefs of ancient kings. The Rock Art Project film tells the story of how researchers used drones and photogrammetry to create digital copies of endangered rock art, and, in that process, to demonstrate the many advantages of digital archaeology.
Screening time: 7:10-7:17 PM, Thursday, May 2, 2019
Length: 7 mins.
Country: Luxembourg
Language: English
Director: Juan Aguilar
Producer: Juan Aguilar
Project Mosul follows the story of Chance Coughenour and Matthew Vincent, two digital archaeologists, who raised an international crowd-sourcing project to produce digital reproductions of objects destroyed in the Mosul Museum at the hands of ISIS. In 2014, that terrorist group occupied Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city. Its reign of terror began with public executions and imposition of strict ISIS sharia law. As part of their psychological campaign, ISIS gunmen stormed the Mosul Museum, pillaged its collection, and destroyed countless artifacts. Humanity watched in horror as images of this destruction diffused worldwide via social media. In London, two archaeologists decided to take action, spurring an international crowd-sourced campaign to create digital 3D replicas of the lost heritage.
Screening time: 5:35-5:45 PM, Sunday, May 5, 2019
Length: 9 mins.
Country: United Kingdom
Language: English
Director: Joosung Kwon
Producer: Holly Butcher
This is a biological story of Musicality. Its journey, guided by four advanced researchers, shows Music to be no singular entity. Music integrates distinct traits—in humans, uniquely so. Via diverse cinematic languages, this film explains how these traits shaped us and function socially, and have analogues in other animals. We witness a vast variety of musical manifestations, collected with deep aesthetic sensitivity. Many collaborators participate, spanning from Mu Mbana’s deep voice to the Roxanne Butterfly’s graceful dancing, from tribal rituals to modern dance, from Pyrenees songbirds to Polynesian whales. Explanations interconnect, co-conveying key concepts and mechanisms—via digital animations, MRI, ultrasound footage, even metaphorical images, abstractly evoking the otherwise ineffable. The narration is punctuated by expert interviews, sustaining a rigorous, yet poetical, academic coherence. Biomusicology only recently burst in and remains mostly unknown. So misconceptions regarding Musicality’s human exclusivity remain widespread—even in academia.
Screening time: 1:00-2:24 PM, Sunday, May 5, 2019
Length: 84 mins.
Country: Spain
Language: English
Director: Daniel B. Arvizu and Andrea Spalletti
Producer: Daniel B. Arvizu, Shenny A. Madrigal, and Andrea Spalletti
Distributor: Daniel B. Arvizu
The only one of the seven ancient wonders of the world still standing, the Great Pyramid of Giza has fascinated people for centuries. In November 2017, the Scan Pyramids research team announced that they had made an historic discovery: using cutting-edge, non-invasive technology, they had discovered several new cavities within the Great Pyramid—the biggest discovery about these pyramids in centuries. This film shows how these modern-day explorers—particle physicists, experts in 3D digital technologies and engineers in thermal imaging—made this massive discovery. Witness the first scientific mission in 30 years authorized by the Egyptian government to examine the pyramid of Khufu, involving adventures, trials, and successes in this unique journey through time and space.
Screening time:1:21-2:21 PM, Saturday, May 4, 2019
Length: 59 mins.
Country: France
Language: English
Director: Florence Tran
Producer: BONNE PIOCHE / SOPHIE PARRAULT/ EMMANUEL PRIOU
Distributor: LUCKY YOU
Islam arose in the 7th century, after Judaism and Christianity. It is the last born of the great monotheistic religions. From the Arabian Peninsula, the Prophet Muhammad and his followers conquered gigantic territories. Islam’s diffusion was dazzling and rooted deeply. Its conquests led to the construction of new spaces for worship: the mosques—places of assembly and prayer for the Muslim faithful. Witnesses to faith, and markers of the power of great Muslim rulers, the mosques tell us, by their diversity, the whole history of Islam, its spirituality incarnated in monuments where sacred architecture reaches the heights of ingenuity and beauty. Refinement of art and immensity of spaces are the primary principles, perpetuated over more than ten centuries, from Jerusalem to Cordoba, Istanbul to Cairo, Delhi to Isfahan.
Screening time: 8:44-10:15 PM, Friday, May 3, 2019
Length: 90 mins.
Country: France
Language: French and English with English subtitles
Producer: ARTE FRANCE, ZED