Inspired by Jim’s description of one of his 10 formative movies, I realized that one of the movies that’s had the most impact on me is Quest for Fire. The 1981 Canadian anthropological movie about 4 separate tribes of homo erectus, neanderthal and homo sapiens, and their interactions.
I remember being absolutely fascinated by the movie, watching it dozens of times (it was one of the early movies offered on our fancy new SuperChannel Cable Movie Channel when I was a kid). I haven’t thought explicitly about the movie in years, but have realized that it’s really affected me by helping to viscerally see and empathize with the various cultures depicted.
Quest for Fire was so powerful to me, because it was so real. It didn’t feel like fiction. It felt like what we would now call embedded reportage. Following the story, without shaping it. (of course the story was shaped – it’s a work of fiction – but it doesn’t FEEL like a work of fiction) It made anthropology, evolution, natural selection, adaptation, and so many other concepts clear and alive.
It showed how science isn’t a separate thing – it is the world around us. It is us.
I just bought the movie, and have been waiting for it to finish downloading from iTunes so I can rewatch it. Looking forward to it!
D’Arcy,
That edited preview with music is quite compelling indeed. And it makes me think we could do a very interesting and entertaining take on this film: “Quest for EDUGLU.” I can see it now, the centralized IT department attacks the loosely banded tribes of EDUPUNKs, only to be beaten back my their RSS enabled clubs (or even light sabers if we want to go the futuristic route). And the controversial love story comes between Web 2.0 tools and the semantic web, can they find some common ground to move forward and procreate a new, intelligent tribe of humanity. Hmmmm….it could be a US/Canadian co-production, and I can kill some squirrels to make the wardrobe. Think about it, it could be huge!
As to the film, this is a wonderful production, and in many ways is an insane experiment given that the feature length film has no dialogue at all. There is much to be learned from how they allowed the idea and action to push the story along, while at the same time presenting a really powerful filmic argument. In many ways the fundamental lesson and basis of working within a visual form like film. When I was at UCLA 15 years ago, my girlfriend at the time was a film student and one professor made them make a 10-15 minute film without any dialogue, an exercise in exploring the medium and focusing on the visual and dramatic possibilities of the form.
It is often with limitations like these that we begin to understand the power of any given way to narrate visually, which hearkens back to your previous post about telling a story in pictures, without necessarily understanding fully that is what we are doing. Now I don’t mean to discount text as compelling narrative in this regard because that would be silly, but rather the push to make people inhabit a form they may not be as comfortable with would be essential. Everybody in K12 and University should be forced to make their own version of Quest for Fire as a means of exploring these media that we also inhabit but are rarely trained with as we are text.
Jim, I expect to see makeup and costumes in the next Bava Edupunk Production 🙂 IIRC, one of the reasons they decided to go completely without dialogue was that it would all be a bit silly – nobody has any clue what the languages would have been like, or sounded like, over 80,000 years ago. There are some language-like portions of the movie, but not much where you’d be able to try translation…
“Quest for Fire” was a big deal for us too, but not for any of the reasons you cite. I’m not too proud to admit I couldn’t stand to sit through it when it first came out (I was like 10 years old!).
No, it was huge because 2 kids in my class were extras in the film. We thought that was the coolest thing, EVAR, and it sparked dreams of movie careers in many of their classmates (which as far as I know, never amounted to anything, but maybe I’ll do some more facebook stalking!)
Yeah. And it’s not like the caveman sex scene had anything to do with the fascination with this film, either…
HA! Just took a look at the description on iTunes. They’re not even allowed to write the word “homo”!
Yeah. I saw that and wondered the same thing. Scared of overly sensitive network filters? Doesn’t make any sense to me.
homo erectus !!
homo habilis !!!
homo sapiens sapiens !!!!
uh oh. guess I’m on their list now 😉