Lights, camera, action– filming the past and saving history (at Ostia Antica)

Ostia Antica is a great place for doc­u­men­taries. Here, film­ing in sum­mer 2009 at the Colos­seum (another obvi­ous choice) for “When Rome Ruled” on National Geographic.

FILMING is a ubiq­ui­tous way we doc­u­ment the past.  Mark my words, one of the most impor­tant con­tri­bu­tions we can make today as pro­fes­sion­als  to the fields of his­tory, archae­ol­ogy, and con­ser­va­tion is to tie them into the visual cul­ture that is ever-evolving and part of our daily lives.

We already do it as tourists all the time, whether with our iphones or cam­corders or dig­i­tal cam­eras.  At the other end of the spec­trum, I’ve per­son­ally been quite involved in a num­ber of film doc­u­men­taries, begin­ning with Engi­neer­ing an Empire (His­tory)– and as recently as When Rome Ruled, still still air­ing on Nat Geo.  In either case, both recre­ational film­ing and pro­fes­sional doc­u­men­tary film­ing are engag­ing ways to record the past, remem­ber it, and live history.

But between the tourist record­ing a rapid trip down the Nile or walk­ing through Petra  and the doc­u­men­tary film team, usu­ally work­ing on a com­pressed sched­ule with a lim­ited bud­get, there is a third pro­tag­o­nist, that is not yet part of the equa­tion: the use of film by the scholar.  We (AIRC) are work­ing to make this a real­ity. Schol­ars are such an impor­tant group of indi­vid­u­als, but they have not yet col­lec­tively got­ten with the cur­rent trend.  There are a num­ber of excep­tions, of course, and film is find­ing its way into the record­ing aspect of schol­ars’ work, but it is cer­tainly not con­sis­tent or stan­dard­ized.   Through the work we are doing in Rome, we are on the verge of ush­er­ing in a great change, regard­ing the scholar and the use of film.

For one who is unveil­ing the past, mak­ing new obser­va­tions and dis­cov­er­ies– whether it be the con­ser­va­tor work­ing on pre­serv­ing the site, an archi­tect who has to cre­ate new struc­tures to shel­ter the past, or  the archae­ol­o­gist who is uncov­er­ing a pre­vi­ously unknown site– it is through video doc­u­men­ta­tion that we can best record that moment, in addi­tion to reports, pho­tog­ra­phy, draw­ing, vir­tual real­ity mod­el­ing after laser scan­ning, etc.  And mak­ing a doc­u­men­tary about the project allows the non spe­cial­ist and spe­cial­ist alike to gain insights about the nature of the site, the con­text of the mon­u­ment or arti­fact (that is later placed in a museum or store­room).  We schol­ars need to become bet­ter sto­ry­tellers and engage col­leagues and the gen­eral pub­lic alike to fos­ter more atten­tion to our cul­tural lega­cies– for great appre­ci­a­tion and more involve­ment from the pub­lic (local com­mu­ni­ties, tourists– prob­a­ble vol­un­teers and activists in pre­serv­ing cul­tural her­itage sites).  The moti­va­tion to cre­ate film doc­u­men­taries is edu­ca­tional (with some enter­tain­ment value) rather than com­mer­cial (which under­lines the pro­duc­tion of film doc­u­men­tary projects).

In all of this, the Amer­i­can Insti­tute for Roman Cul­ture is a pro­tag­o­nist.  We began with a pilot project in the sum­mer of 2010 with North­east­ern University’s Pro­fes­sor Vin­cent Roc­c­chio (school of com­mu­ni­ca­tions), and his stu­dents from var­i­ous back­grounds. They trav­eled to Rome last sum­mer to immerse them­selves in his­tory in  novel way.    Through the Institute’s exclu­sive rela­tion­ship with the Min­istry of Cul­ture and super­in­ten­dency of Ostia Antica, they gained access to Ostia Antica to film, over a month, var­i­ous aspects of the site, as directed by the AIRC and Prof. Roc­chio, to cre­ate a series of edu­ca­tional videos that encap­su­late the expe­ri­ence of Ostia Antica.  And we’re doing it again this sum­mer with North­east­ern Uni­ver­sity; we’re excited to pro­duce new, excit­ing mate­r­ial on ancient Roman cul­ture.  (AIRC is also con­duct­ing its own video doc­u­men­ta­tion this spring with the Ital­ian Min­istry– so stay tuned).

The heavy lift­ing — film­ing, inter­view­ing, and edit­ing– was con­ducted the excel­lent, devoted North­east­ern sum­mer stu­dents of the pro­gram (some with­out any prior expe­ri­ence in film), who are cited at the end of every video.  Please take a moment to see these engag­ing, edu­ca­tional videos, about 7–8 min­utes in length, accom­pa­nied by intro­duc­tory texts on the indi­vid­ual top­ics. The entire pro­duc­tion, over 40 min­utes, gives a well-rounded 360 degree view of Ostia Antica. The videos are on the Institute’s site is WEDIGROME on YouTube.

1. Ostia Antica Chap­ter 1– an intro­duc­tion. You learn about the ancient city and its basic characteristics.

2. Ostia Antica Chap­ter 2: — the sig­nif­i­cance. Ostia Antica is the mir­ror of Rome. No other city cap­tures what Rome was like in the impe­r­ial period.

3. Ostia Antica Chap­ter 3– con­serv­ing the past (a per­sonal favorite) in which we address the issues of con­ser­va­tion that Ostia, and any cul­tural her­itage site faces.  Each site’s issues are par­tic­u­lar and indi­vid­ual (veg­e­ta­tion type, fund­ing resources, humid­ity fac­tors, amount of tourism, etc.) and we address the real­ity of Ostia Antica– its great­est chal­lenge is that so much uncov­ered  means that there is so much to preserve.

4. Ancient Ostia chap­ter 4: Daily Life What did the ancients eat?  How did they spend their days?  What was life like in a cos­mopoli­tan, urban cen­ter, directly tied to Rome?

5. Ancient Ostia chap­ter 5: Reli­gions of Rome Who were the gods that the Romans wor­shipped?  How did they come to Rome from all over the Mediter­ranean?  How were rites con­ducted, ‚and who attended them?  Did wor­ship­ping the gods actu­ally mean any­thing in your daily life in Rome and Ostia?

Please note: Each video is a co-production between the AIRC and North­east­ern Uni­ver­sity (Prof. Vin­cent Roc­chio). Film­ing was done in the sum­mer of 2010.  The NEU film stu­dents who made the indi­vid­ual videos are cited at the end of each seg­ment; the Insti­tute salutes them for all of their hard work in an engag­ing, out­door envi­ron­ment.  All rights to these videos belong to the Amer­i­can Insti­tute for Roman Cul­ture through the Super­in­ten­dency of Ostia Antica. For fur­ther inquiries, con­tact me or  info@romanculture.org.

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