Real sand and digital dust

This year's programme shows the huge range of archaeological subjects and film-forms and for the first time two clearly defined featured country-blocks. Iran and films of the U.S.S.R. from the 20's to the 80's. – The major part is formed by films of the last four years for the competition. The symposium which again is integrated in the programme "New Paths in Archaeological Film Making - Longer, prettier, trendier, but is it better?" gives an opportunity to take a look back on the archaeological film of the last two decades and invites us to review our personal assessment of quality features. As an example for filmarchaeology Mr. Thomas Bakels presents his costly work on the restoration of Ernst Lubitsch's silent movie "The Pharao's Wife" from 1922 that will be presented after the festival on April 30 at the communal cinema in Kiel. I have pleasant memories of especially one take of the original material: the eye-level view on a desert's sand dune over which an Egyptian army attacks. Immediately I think about the set at the sandy Mark Brandenburg and the direction of thousands of extras. Apart from the time of production – It would never have come to my mind that the set and the extras could have been rendered by a computer like it's done in many big-money productions today. For us it is self-evident that today no army of extras has to be hired and paid. But did our picture of antiquity unnoticeably changed as well? Does this reception influence our attitude towards history? Our programme gives everybody the opportunity to reconsider his or her attitude. The opening night offers a huge range of subjects and genres.

"Tauro", a short trick film follows the motive of the bull in archaeology and art through the centuries till now. The Russian block (see special article in the catalogue) features a silent film about underwater archaeology from 1930. "Novgorod" deals with thousands of letters written by citizens around the year 1000 on birch barks. "Big Bones - Big Business" uncovers today's very lucrative trade with mammoth tusks out of the Siberian icy desert.

"On the Limes-museum in Aalen" will be presented on Thursday. The museum features an impressive portrayal of the Roman provincial history, whose archaeological monuments are part of UNESCO's list of cultural heritage. – The French production series Les gestes de la Préhistoire presents a new category of short movies: films of only a few minutes length that often accompany exhibitions sometimes presented continuously without sound (like: "Hawking in Starigard" on Friday in the morning). Together we take a look on early craftsmanship like the manufacturing of a bone-flute or the reproduction of a knife from the time around 40.000 years ago. - "Tajna Brijegova" documents the cooperation between German and Bosnian archaeologists who do an excavation northwest of Sarajevo in an area that 4800 years ago had been the centre of a huge Butmir-Culture network. – In the jungle of "Borneo" an expedition tries to find evidence of a 10.000 year old culture.

Our block regarding archaeological films of the U.S.S.R. from the 20's to the 80's deals with "Exposing films" that present the public and ritual relic openings of important Russian saints. They served Stalin as well as Khrushchev (who used the opening of the tomb of Ivan the terrible for his revenge with Stalin) for their political exploitation. They show that "the archaeological activities of the Soviet Union not only served scientific purposes but had always been a way to make history." (A. Derjabin, Film historian and curator of the programme) In their presentation Tom Stern and Thomas Tode take a look back at 15 years of archaeology on TV. – "Sur la piste des Nabatéens" uncovers the secret of the long time closed city of Hegra, the starting point of the caravans to Petra. The short animation-film "Achille à l'île de Scyros" recalls the futile trick of Achilles' mother Thetis in order to cheat Ulysses and to keep her son away from the Trojan War. "Nefertiti, the mystery of Armana" explains the various tasks and the role she played beside her controversial husband King Akhenaton.

Traditionally our programme on Friday in the morning is oriented to school classes and presents in short terms the range of the archaeological film: the animation "Kalle the mole of the museum", "That's how it looks like" an authentic amusing documentation of an excavation in Schleswig-Holstein, the short film "Hawking in Starigard" an example for experimental archaeology and the "Varus' Battle" from the Sendung mit der maus series explains commander Varus' tactics of the battle against three Roman legions. A case for the computer? The making of shows us how the legions had been created. "Flames over Quatna" lets the lavish live in the bronzed age Syrian metropolis Quatna until its downfall in 1340 come to live.

The report "A piece of heaven on the move" about the odyssey of the find and dating of the bronzed-age celestial disc is entertaining and thought-provoking. The full-length documentation "The Lost Expedition" about John Franklins tragic search for the Northwestern Passage leads us into the 19^th century. The disappearance of the Vikings on Greenland raise a lot of questions that "Greenland's lost civilization" tries to answer.

"Sur les traces des Pharaons noires" gives us an introduction about the huge African kingdom Kerma in the northern part of the Sudan with its "black pharaohs" of the Nubian civilization. Thomas Bakels gives us an inside view of his restoration of the silent movie "The Pharaohs' wife". The very exciting sometimes even thrilling part on Friday evening is formed by the feature film "Draugr" that tells the story of an undead vampire in Old Icelandic with German subtitles and the participation of students from the Institute for Pre- and Protohistory of the Christian Albrechts University, Kiel.

Unfortunately we had very few entries for the underwater archaeology award. The underwater-block begins on Saturday in the morning with a piece of video art: "Diving" is an isolated part of an installation showing a young woman talking about her thoughts holding her breath. "Columbus' last voyage" deals with the question if the recently found shipwreck in the Caribbean belonged to Columbus' fleet. The results of an examination of the wood at the Leibniz-Institute in Kiel support this theory. The category for experimental or applied archaeology is formed for the following short films: "The eel-spear", a reconstruction of a stone-age device for fishing eel, "Bookbinding", a precise how to restore old books from the monastery-hill of Athos and "Experimenting by Building a Roman Roof" that demonstrates the production of roman roofing tiles.

Saturday afternoon is dedicated to Iranian films (see catalogue article). The first four productions from the 60's stand out due to their personal and artistic approach. In 1964 the "Hill of Marlik" earned the director the bronzed Lion of Venice. "Parnian" (2002) shows that the Persian film has developed a language of its own which distinguishes itself from that of the West: very personal without being sensational pseudo adventures. The just finished film "Aratta" reveals a sensational knowledge: the cradle of our culture seems to be somewhere in Persia. – "A treasure of Auschwitz" belongs to contemporary archaeology and deals with the search for the liturgical devices of the great synagogue that had been buried in order to save them from the advancing German army. It is the last film before the presentation of the awards on Saturday evening.