Water in the Mediterranean civilisations

INA00308

Note

Water in the Mediterranean civilisations

Collection title

La Source

INA00308

Source

INA (FR)

First broadcast date

01/01/1927

Production year

1927

Abstract

Silent film of 1927, showing in pictures how water is essential to life. Since the Egyptians to the Romans and the Arabs, systems have been invented to bring water to the living spaces: drilling, irrigation channels, fountains...

Type

video

Production companies

Ministry of Agriculture (MINAG) - Coproduction
French Film Edition (EFC) - Coproduction

Broadcaster

INA

Audiovisual form

Documentary

Primary theme

Water issues

Secondary themes

Historical heritages / Antiquity
Historical heritages / Arab and muslim worlds
Economy / Techniques and technologies
Economy / Roads and transports

Credits / Cast

Benoît Lévy Jean - Director

Period of events

From -500 to 0

Map locations

France - South East - Le Pont du Gard
Algeria - East - Djemila
Morocco - North

Original language

French

Media running time

4m58

Additional information

Context

Water in Mediterranean civilizations – INA00308

Yvan Gastaut

This silent movie dating from 1927, and produced by the French Ministry of Agriculture, intends to prove, through the strength of images, that water is essential to life. Taking a long-term view, this movie shows that From Egyptians to Arabs, including Romans, all the civilizations invented systems to transport water to living spaces. The images evoke the drilling, irrigation channels and the role of water fountains.

The writer-director, Jean Benoît-Levy (1888-1959) is one of the pioneers of French teaching and education cinema: between 1922 and 1935, he directed about three hundred short, medium-length and feature films for popular education purposes, meeting institutional orders by the ministries of Health, Agriculture, and Vocational Education, as well as by the City Council of Paris, among others.

In the inter-war period, Jean Benoît-Levy was active in the League of Nations, particularly with the Institute for Cultural Cooperation, and he was convinced that the cinema can serve as an excellent agent of humanism and peace education. Being the eclectic he was, he also embarked on a career as a director of fiction films such as La Maternelle in 1933 with Madeleine Renaud. And being passionate about dance, he made many films about it.

Fleeing anti-Semitism during World War II, Jean Benoît-levy escaped to the United States, as did other intellectuals. He later came back to France, and was appointed in 1946 as the Director of Films and Visual Information for the United Nations. In 1958, he established UNESCO's International Council for Film, Television and Audiovisual Communication.

This didactic and historical evocation of the importance of water illustrates how the cinema helped raise people’s awareness of the planet's major issues during the inter-war period.

Bibliography

Philippe Dugot, Water around the Mediterranean, Paris, l’Harmattan, 2002.

Transcript

- silence

- With Water: life.

- .

- Without Water:

- death and the desert.

- images

- When the tiniest spring is big enough to give birth to a rich oasis.

- images

- Every primitive civilization venerated Water.

- Ancient Egyptians adore the God Nile, on which the very existence of Egypt relied.

- images

- And the Egyptians of our times still use the ingenious lifting machines that were invented by their ancestors:

- the counterbalancing “shadoof”.

- images

- The “saguia” moved by an ox.

- images

- The Romans, conquering and building cities, started by setting up a whole system of water conveyance.

- Baths were being built, along with temples…

- Djemila thermal baths.

- images

- … fountains….

- Djemila fountain.

- images

- …and gigantic aqueducts, bringing water from faraway springs.

- Pont du Gard.

- images

- The Arabs, who came after of the Romans, also knew what Water was worth.

- And the Sultans of Morocco perpetuated their memory through the creation of public fountains.

- images

- Nowadays, thanks to the power of lifting machines, the improvement of waterworks, it is easy to be rapidly equipped with clear water in abundance.

- images

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The engineers of water

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Rivers

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02/06/1995 - 25m44s
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Water, a rare capital

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04/29/2010 - 21m41s
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