March 14-17, 2021

Overland

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Synopsis

From award-winning filmmakers Elisabeth Haviland James (The Loving Story, Althea) and Revere La Noue comes The Falconbridge Collection’s feature documentary, Overland, an intimate and epic portrait of three ancient souls. The heroes of Overland bond with birds of prey, much in the same way it has been done for 6000 years, in a world where the wilderness they depend on, and the lifestyle they cling to, are threatened on all sides.

Overland explores our connection to the wild that is fading out of sight and out of mind. Following the extraordinary quests of three falconers, it is a stunning cinematic journey across four continents that twists and turns like nature itself, bridging ancient to modern, east to west, and earth to sky. Lauren, a daredevil anthropologist, travels the world collecting ancient falconry secrets, building her skills to train injured eagles to fly and hunt again. But when she encounters a confused eagle whose tragic past with humans seems beyond repair, doubt creeps in and she begins to question everything she thought she knew. Meanwhile, Giovanni, a modern-day Renaissance man, has given up the bustle of Rome for a solitary life with his wolves, horse and hawks on a tiny countryside farm. When a transcendent experience with an 800-year-old falconry book forces him to rethink his purpose - and the menace of the “digital cage” - he realizes he must make a change.  Far away in Dubai, Khalifa is training to be the world’s best falcon racer. For thousands of years his nomadic ancestors hunted with the falcon to feed their tribe in the harsh Arabian desert. Now that cars have replaced camels and international development has engulfed Dubai, Khalifa must find a way to keep the fragile culture of his Bedouin forefathers alive, because he knows once they are gone...they are gone forever.

As the movie unfolds in the wilds of the American Midwest, Italy, the Holy See, Scotland, Mongolia, Azerbaijan, the United Arab Emirates and South Africa, the epic journeys of Lauren, Giovanni, and Khalifa are interwoven into a stirring story that asks how we can stay connected to our natural, primal spirit, even when modern society threatens to erase it.

Filmmaker Biography

Elisabeth Haviland James (Director, Producer, Editor) is a passionate documentary storyteller, James is a Peabody and Emmy winning filmmaker (The Loving Story, Althea, In So Many Words) whose work has screened theatrically, on television and in museums; her work includes historical, cinema verité, environmental and experimental films. Overland is the second documentary feature film she has directed and produced. From the jungles of Central Africa to dusty basement archives, she loves the challenge of capturing the heart of a story. She approached the stories in Overland with the belief that broadening our understanding of each other cultivates peace, and was hooked by the opportunity to tell a “pangaeaic” story about relationships - to each other, to animals and to our planet.

James was recently commissioned by the Morehead Planetarium at the University of North Carolina to write and curate a full-dome production about the American South, which premiered in October 2019. James was named one of two film fellows in the state by the North Carolina Arts Council in 2015. She is currently editing a feature documentary about 19th century photographer Eadweard Muybridge, and in development on several international projects. James has taught documentary filmmaking at Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies and as an artist in residence at the Oklahoma Arts Institute; she has also served as a guest lecturer for the State Department in Central Asia. She is a graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and the MA program in Documentary Film at Stanford University. She is an active member of the Documentary Producer’s Alliance.
 

Revere La Noue (Director, Producer, Editor) is an artist and filmmaker working on a wide array of projects all over the world.  Over the past two decades he has had the privilege of working on feature and short format documentaries ranging in topic from woodpeckers to opera to college football. For his first feature documentary Revere and his partner Elisabeth Haviland James navigated four continents, three languages, and a myriad of creatures and wildernesses to create Overland. As a visual artist, Revere has been collaborating and innovating on diverse multi-media projects including a large canvas print of wild horses that wrapped a city block, an experimental photography exhibit at the Ford Presidential Museum, and a number of solo exhibitions of abstract paintings and other mixed-media works with themes including modern dance, architecture, and military history. He believes in the interconnectedness of all forms of art and that his experiences as a collegiate athlete helps him in the team sport of filmmaking. He discovered his love for birds of prey as a teenager volunteering at a raptor rehabilitation facility at an urban wilderness park in Baltimore City. He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and received a Master’s in Documentary Film from Stanford University.

Schedule

Online Screenings

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March 14-17, 2021.