After 3000 tons of stones and 30 years of work, our protagonist is one step away from making a great discovery in Egypt. This is the story of a man who pursues his goals regardless of the opinion of skeptics or the mockery of disbelievers. Before him, he faces his last mission in the last place where the tomb of Pharaoh Herihor could exist. Follow him as he desperately attempts to uncover a mystery dating back to the 11th century BC, picking up clues along the way that his theory could in fact be correct—and in the end making a very shocking discovery.
Length: 40 mins.
Country: Poland
Language: English, Arabic & Polish with English Subtitles
Director: Monika Krupa
Producer(s): Dorota Mandziara, Pawel Kwiatkowski, Agnieszka Franusiak
Distributor: Trzyfilm, Pawel Kwiatkowski
In our isolated Polynesian community, we live the story of our ancestral culture-hero, Lata. To make a voyage, Lata needs a crew. He welcomes men, women and children—its hard workers with skills along with applicants of dubious character, including an anthropologist, Dr. Marianne “Mimi” George. Our community blesses the vessel and sailors, and we learn how to sail in Lata’s embrace. We find our way in the open ocean by attending to winds, waves, stars, and other signs that our ancestors show us when we need them. We arrive at islands and learn what happened to family members since the last voyage, some generations earlier. We reconcile, reaffirm our love for each other, and look to our future together.
Length: 57 mins.
Country: USA
Language: English
Director: Marianne "Mimi" George, Heu`ionalani Wyeth
Producer: Marianne "Mimi" George, Heu`ionalani Wyeth
Distributor: Pacific Traditions Society
In Presidio, Texas, one normally hears Mexican Norteña music in the bars. An Anglo-American, Mayor John Ferguson, a father and the principal of the city high school, governs Presidio and its 4,426 inhabitants. As mariachi band performers, John and Maria Santa Cruz also play Norteña music in nearby Ojinaga, Mexico, across the Rio Grande from Presidio. People of both towns feel the need to understand the history that binds Mexico and the United States together, including the recent period when the thread that weaves them together seems to have become tangled. John Ferguson is a man whose ethnicity represents just 2 percent of the population that voted to make him their mayor. This story reflects his affection for his city and portrays the reality of inter-communal customs which represent an element of unity between two communities otherwise often in conflict today.
Length: 14 mins.
Country: Italy
Language: English & Italian with English Subtitles
Director: Andrea Lazzari
Producer: Nicolo Casino
Distributor: Pre1mere Film
Amid restorations, archaeological excavations, and unpublished archives, scientists and historians are rediscovering the fantastic 2,000-year architectural history of the Vatican and revealing the role of art in building that universal seat of Christendom. Told through a series of interviews and animation storytelling, this film provides answers to key questions, such as why the Church constructed Vatican City, how they chose the location of the buildings in the Vatican, where Saint Peter was buried, where the Church obtained the art in the Vatican, and which artists were involved.
Length: 52 mins.
Country: France
Language: English
Director: Marc Jampolsky and Marie Thiry
Producer: Stephane Milliere
Distributor: Terranoa
This film highlights the continuous importance of ancient Corinth throughout history. It portrays the changing face of the site through advances in archaeological science and transformations of the landscape across 123 years of excavation by the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. They began excavating the site in 1896, unearthing many artifacts, including 34,000 vases along with loom weights and much more material, ranging in age from the 7th millennium BC to the 19th Century AD. The findings have vastly expanded our understanding about the culture of the city, who they traded with, their religion, and more.
Length: 14 mins.
Country: Greece
Language: English
Director: Nikos Dayandas
Producer: Stelios Apostolopoulos
Distributor: AORI Films
This is a scientific investigative documentary which seeks to unveil the mystery of the Incan Rascar Capac mummy, the inspiration for Hergé's famous mummy in the cartoon series, “The Adventures of Tintin,” one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century. The viewer sets off on a journey of discovery, investigating the pre-Columbian mummies of Chile and Peru, which remain among the most mysterious treasures in the great museum collections of Europe. In the process, the film answers many questions: Who were the mummified people? How and when were they mummified? How do pre-Columbian mummies of Chile and Peru differ from ancient Egyptian mummies?
Length: 52 mins.
Country: France
Language: English, French & Spanish with English Subtitles
Director: Frédéric Cordier
Producer: Un film à la patte, Agnes Trintzius, Panoramique Terre Production, Moulinsart, Arte GEIE
Distributor: ARTE France
About 4,000 years ago, Assyrian merchants established a commercial settlement in the ancient city-state of Kaneš, within central Anatolia. They came from Aššur, in northern Mesopotamia. We have come to understand their history through their writings on clay tablets that have stood the test of time. Excavators have unearthed more than 22,500 cuneiform tablets from the archaeological site of Kültepe. How and why did these Mesopotamian clay tablets arrive in Anatolia, and what do they tell us? The clay-inscribed voice of Tarām-Kūbi, an Assyrian woman who corresponded with her brother and her husband in Kaneš, takes us back to this ancient time.
Length: 47 mins.
Country: France
Language: English & French with Enlglish subtitles
Director: Vanessa Tubiana-Brun
Producer: Vanessa Tubiana-Brun
Distributor: Vanessa Tubiana-Brun
This drama takes place 19,000 years ago, in the European Paleolithic Era. Owing to his habit of making drawings of animals and neglecting to watch a child for whom he is responsible, a man risks the life of that child in a hunting accident. His tribe deems him responsible for this incident and casts him out. He finds shelter in a cave near his group’s campsite, where he lives out the rest of his life creating cave art depicting the animals his people hunt and, in the process, describing his identity. The film shows how this fictional tribe lived, but most importantly, imagines how and why the people of that time created art.
Length: 21 mins.
Country: France
Language: No Dialogue
Director: Romain Gresillon
Producer: Annabelle Bouzom
Distributor: Les films de l'autre cougar
This docu-drama is about a modern rural family in Iran with two teenage children. Their daughter and elder child, Fatemeh, helps them a lot in their daily lives, but repeatedly faces difficulties and obstacles, mostly resulting from the confining gender roles that are placed on daughters in their society. In the process of documenting these challenges, the film explores Iranian culture, the role of children in the Iranian family dynamic, and the role of females in Iranian society. It shows how one family is breaking free of those traditional constraints by encouraging their daughter in her effort to obtain a license and drive a motorcycle.
Length: 30 mins.
Country: Iran
Language: Farsi with English Subtitles
Director: Amirali Mirderikvand
Producer: Amirali Mirderikvand
Distributor: Amirali Mirderikvand
This is the story of grain, which, through its ancient journey from Anatolia to Europe, established the world’s existing economic system. Starting from the Fertile Crescent region, where wheat was first included in agriculture, the documentary follows, step-by-step, key archaeological sites in Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece, and Italy. Following recent findings in Neolithic excavations, the film sheds light on the unknown parts of humanity’s 12,000-year long adventure and addresses intriguing questions. Why did humans switch to a settled agricultural lifeway after 2.5 million years of hunting and gathering? Who were the very first farmers? How did wheat come to support the global economic system that we have today?
Length: 75 mins.
Country: Turkey
Language: Bulgarian, English, Italian, Kurdish, Turkish with English subtitles
Director: Sevinç Baloğlu
Producer: Su Baloglu
Distributor: SuFilm
The Koi and Habemetol Pomo have called the majestic Clear Lake Basin home for an incredible 14,000 years. However, rapid urbanization and the looting of artifacts for sale on illegal markets has threatened to erase their long history and rich culture from this unique landscape. In an effort to protect these sacred sites, the tribes unite with their local governments and communities to preserve their priceless culture and past. This is a story of the those who occupied the Clear Lake Basin first and how they are trying to maintain the culture and history of their ancestral lands, told by representatives of the Pomo along with partners in the local and state governments.
Length: 29 mins.
Country: USA
Language: English
Director: Daniel Bruns
Producer: Dino Beltran, Sherry Treppa, Brian Brazeal
Distributor: CSU Chico Anthropology