[PAST EVENT] "The Navigators - Pathfinders of the Pacific" Documentary Screening

November 10, 2015
5:30pm
Location
Law School, Room 119
613 S Henry St
Williamsburg, VA 23185Map this location
Anthropologist and filmmaker Sam Low's film, "The Navigators - Pathfinders of the Pacific," tells the story of how a thousand years before Europeans knew the Pacific existed, Polynesian seafarers explored and settled the vast Pacific ocean. To shoot the film, Sam Low traveled all over the Pacific "but the most interesting place I filmed," Low says, " was on the tiny island of Satawal, in Micronesia." Here - the last traditional navigators still made extended voyages without charts or instruments. Anyone wishing to learn what it was like to discover distant islands by the signs of direction in wind, wave, and stars will enjoy Low's film. It is truly a saga of one of the world's great seafaring people - and a story that most of us have not heard.

Filmmaker Low will be in attendance to answer questions and sign his new book, Hawaiki Rising - Hokule'a, Nainoa Thompson and the Hawaiian Renaissance. The Anthropology Department and the Virginia Coastal Policy Center (VCPC) are sponsoring the event, while the Student Environmental and Animal Law Society (SEALS), the Anthropology Club, the American Indian Students Association (AISS), and the Asian American Student Initiative are providing volunteer support. A reception (from 6:30-8:30) will accompany the Sam Low book signing after the film viewing.

Sam Low is an award winning filmmaker whose career spans twenty-five years. He specializes in films that tell the story of the human condition, often through the prism of anthropology (he earned his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Harvard in 1975). Low produced many films for PBS including The Ancient Mariners, about underwater archeology in the Mediterranean, and a six part series about the Maya - Out of the Past.