Excerpts from an essay of the catalogue of CINARCHEA '96
by Dr. Kurt Denzer and Martin Weber M.A.


The task of archeology is to do resarch on the cultural heritage of mankind as well as preserving it. Conveying knowledge and making people in the different nations familiar with archeology is the aim of the films, which will be shown on this festival.

(...) However, our hope was fullfilled. Despite a surplus of cultural events and the increasing number of channels we had suceeded in the effort of introducing a science without offering mere entertainment. Further more we had managed to present the various possibilities how the media film can make this science become popular, support it and bring together experts as well as laymen, teachers, pupils and students.The great market of new information techniques and the view on the living conditions in the year 2000 seem to have aroused the curiosity of people to look back to the beginnings of our history. The memory of perished cities, cruel battles and strange rites, adapted for the film, make people tremble with pleasure, but all this does not concern us directly. Somehow, new information on well known facts, daring hypothesises and the latest results of the research do arouse our interest, as if they could still influence our life today. In the course of global standardization, of worldwide computerization, of permanent availiability and of diminishing distances on a decreasing planet we are interested in alternatives, cultural niches and other social options. In my opinion the question how people in former times had been able to live without the present standards and those expected to be reached in the future, seems to have derived from original curiosity and has not been drawn from the present question if these historical forms can be of any use to us. The question "What does the past want to tell us?", often to quickly asked, seems to be less important to me, when facing this pure curiosity, the pure thirst for knowledge, this indifferent pleasure.

Watching these films and reports together with an audience, to enjoy them as a little social event, gives one the feeling of not being alone with one's interests. With respect to the different levels of age of other spectators the questions asked in the productions can now be grasped in a totally different quality than consuming them at home alone in front of the TV. Some of these questions could be e.g. how another former way of life could be continued, how a culture far away had emerged and how it survived, why several cultural techniques like the sailor`s knods have existed for some millenia or why ideals of beauty are still valid ore become fashionable again despite the permanently changing trends.

(...) The introduction of the films and the producers, coming from various different countries as well as the possibility to get into conversation with others afterwards offer the chance to have interdisciplinary and international exchange of experience.
CINARCHEA can point out to a public without any background, how necessary a constructive co-operation of different disciplines can be. Many questions of archeologists can nowadays only be answered more precisely because of the results of the research of other sciences.

(...) New questions will only be posed after the results of other sciences. The combination of presenting films to the public, holding lectures in the symposium and visiting the exhibition may focus our view on the subject and its interrelations.These would have been difficult to recognize if there had been a seperate presentation. CINARCHEA may be an example for the introduction of science, that on one hand attracts experts and on the other hand gives laymen an insight. Considering its complexity and concentration in time this is hardly possible elsewhere.

(...) The present members of international juries of other archeology festivals will discuss the problems with judging films, which are shown in competitions like that. How much simplification can be accepted in productions that are intended to have an effect on the public.

(...) How much film simplicity is enough when a mere documentary is concerned?

Or do these extreme positions only exist on a rhethorical level? Is it not possible that a clear presentation can be at the same time a good cineastic performance, like in good scientific prose?

During the award and the explanations of the jury the public will get an insight into the value of such ideas.