12th International Archaeological and Cultural Film Festival – Day 1

The 12th edition of AGON International Archaeological and Cultural Film Festival is here. The organization celebrates its 28th anniversary and is happy to announce that the Selection Committee has selected the films to be included in this year’s program. From 20 to 25 May, 61 films from 22 countries will be screened at the Greek Film Archive.

For another year, the Festival invites old and new friends to enjoy watching, apart from archaeological films, a wide thematic range of films, including documentaries, reportage, fiction, animation, research, and educational films, among others, always with a focus on the human being. This year’s films are recent creations (from 2019 onwards) that will take us not only to excavation sites in Greece, Egypt, Pergamon and Mesopotamia, Madagascar, Kyrgyzstan, India… but also to Trikala.

We will also learn about forbidden love stories of antiquity, the Stone Age in Sweden, the mysteries hidden at the bottom of a lake in Turkey, the secrets of Louis XIV, the life of horsemen in pre-Christian Siberia, the legends of the Castle of Mytilene, and for the first time a prehistoric woman, Lady Sapiens, will ‘narrate’ her story. All are films that bring the science of History, Archaeology, and Folklore Studies closer to the art of cinema.

Through these films we witness the quests of the scientific community, the juggling between digital and analogue documentation in scientific research, the challenges of excavation in adverse conditions, the joy of discovery, and slowly fading traditions that are captured by the cinematic lens.

Program

17:30
Metal places: Crossroads of Culture in the Eastern Mediterranean | Greece, 2023, 55 minutes
Director: Ioannis Skopeteas – Producer: The Ephorate of Antiquities for the Cyclades, Ministry of Culture
The culture of mines and metals, and most notably copper, in the 2nd and 3rd millennium BC in the eastern Mediterranean to the 20th-century mining culture exploiting ancient mine sites up until the 1970s when they closed down. What remains of the ancient and modern mines today?
The Ephorate of Antiquities for the Cyclades, Demokritos NCSR, the Municipality of Siphnos, the University of Cyprus Archaeological Research Unit and the Asgata Community, Cyprus have created eleven new walking trails on the thin line that connects the past of ancient mines with today. They invite us to walk in Asgata, Cyprus and the Western Cyclades –οn Siphnos, Seriphos, and Kythnos islands. The film hosts the routes, the archaeological findings on which they were based, and the researchers who worked for years to map them out.

18:30
Ocean One K, Mission in the Abyss | France, 2023, 52 minutes
Director: Mathieu PRADINAUD – Producer: Gedeon Programmes
For archaeologists, the largest museum in the world is located underwater. But exploring shipwrecks is a huge challenge: it is impossible to dive to the great depths and excavate. A new era in the archaeological conquest of the abyss has begun with Ocean One K. A humanoid archaeologist robot, capable of exploring the depths and carrying out excavations according to the rules of the art.
A true adventure film, “Ocean One K, mission in the abyss”, is the story of an incredible scientific and human adventure.

19:30
Lady Sapiens | France, 2020, 52 minutes
Direction: Thomas Cirotteau – Production: France Televisions Distribution
Who were the women of prehistory? What role did they play in their societies and families? Accompanied by scientists, Lady Sapiens sets off on the trail of prehistoric women and examines the latest discoveries in the area. Lady Sapiens comments on the, sometimes conflictual, discussions between researchers, which reflect an evolving scientific field that constantly questions the facts. For the first time, Lady Sapiens can tell her own story.

20:30
Roundels – The 7.000-Year-Old Mystery | Poland, 2021, 54 minutes
Director: Krzysztof Paluszyński – Producer: Andrzej Paluszyński, PFS PalFilmStudio
This fictionalised document is a kind of story – a journey across the lands of our country and Europe almost 7,000 years ago. Thanks to outdoor locations, scenography, reenactors, 3D animation, and precisely focused frames, we see the world that has long ceased to exist. The foundation for the film is poorly recognised and studied roundels, the oldest examples of monumental architecture in Europe, dating back 7,000 years. These circular wooden-earth structures with a diameter of up to one hundred and several dozen meters were built using simple tools. According to Professor Lech Czerniak, roundels were a new social institution in Central Europe, reflecting the formation of a new social order after the collapse of the culture of the first farmers in the early 5th millennium BC. The film also presents other spectacular, practically unknown facts of the ancient past of the lands of today’s Poland.