The Ark

Whatever floats your boat...

I'm making a video based on a 700 year old Spanish short story. I still have to do the narration and then I'll need to blend the images--I won't keep all of them--with the story line.

The story takes place in Toledo, in Santiago de Compostela, in Toulouse, and in Rome. I largely played fair in terms of the dating and the setting when choosing the images. (Not always. The spiral staircase is by Antonin Gaudi so it's probably only about 100 years old or so.)

The story is about a wizard and I'm playing around a bit with the idea that science and magic were pretty well mingled in the late 13th and early 14th century. The documents are in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, since Spain was the cultural capital of Europe at that time due to its comparatively free mingling of intellectual and spiritual traditions.

Rudyard Kipling wrote a short story called "The Eye of Allah" which takes place at around the same time the story I'm adapting was actually written. A group of English monks are considering what to do with a primitive microscope that one of their number has brought back with him from Spain.

I didn't even think about Kipling's story until I was well into the edit...

I should complete the actual video soon.

This is how the story flows, but I just threw a Willie DeVille song on top of the images: It's the right length and it is in Spanish.

Views: 49

Comment by lima on September 5, 2010 at 10:10pm
Enjoyed the song with the images. I noticed the Sephirothic Tree or Tree of Life. Are you familar with Rambam? You might enjoy his writings, I would suggest The Guide for the Perplexed.
Comment by flophousepoodle on September 6, 2010 at 12:28am
Looking forward to the story, Geoffache
( ^ that's fache like apache - not ache like achey breaky)
What/who is the bird with the eggs?
Comment by Geoff on September 6, 2010 at 9:11am
Lima, there are historians who believe that the Kabbalah originated in Spain at roughly the same time my story takes place. Wikipedia:

The Zohar first appeared in Spain in the 13th century, and was published by a Jewish writer named Moses de Leon. De Leon ascribed the work to Shimon bar Yochai, a rabbi of the second century CE during the Roman persecution[2] who, according to Jewish legend,[3][4] hid in a cave for thirteen years studying the Torah and was inspired by the Prophet Elijah to write the Zohar. This accords with the traditional claim by adherents that Kabbalah is the concealed part of the Oral Torah.

While the traditional majority view in religious Judaism has been that the teachings of Kabbalah were revealed by God to Biblical figures such as Abraham and Moses and were then transmitted orally from the Biblical era until its redaction by Shimon ben Yochai, modern academic analysis of the Zohar, such as that by the 20th century religious historian Gershom Scholem, has theorized that De Leon was the actual author.


That's why I included Sephirotic Tree. I don't know anything about Rambam but I will google him.

flop, the bird with the eggs is a partridge. Medieval legend has it that partridges steal the eggs from the nests of other birds (like Satan stealing souls). I found this out when tracking down images and it gives extra symbolic punch to the story's denouement.
Comment by lima on September 6, 2010 at 10:30am
As with the talmud, the kabbalah is regarded the same way, personally I would date farther than the 13th century, however I would not disagree that the writings started appearing in the 13th century, or its discussion was out in the open more... IMO the kabbalah can also be looked at as the study and meaning of the words associated in the Torah...the sounds these words make... and the insight the understanding can give one devoted, hence the example of oral teachings.

You might be interested as well with Sefer Yetzirah or Book of Creation
Comment by lima on September 6, 2010 at 10:34am
I should have mentioned letters, vowels, as opposed to focusing on just words...
Comment by BlancheNoE on September 6, 2010 at 12:02pm
If there were ever an affective teaser, this is it. I'm looking very forward to the final director's cut. The music is truly intoxicating and the images are transporting.

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