How about a story about the real-life adventures of not one,
but a whole group of Indiana Jones adventurers?
Indiana Jones, we know, is fictional, but
documentary filmmaker Brent E. Huffman’s Saving Mes Aynak, the story of Qadir
Temori and his band of Afghan archaeologists and their life-and-death
adventures in surveying and saving the 3,000-year-old Buddhist site known as
Mes Aynak is exactly the stuff that Dr. Jones would be working on.
Icarus Films announced this past week that Nov. 8 will mark
the DVD debut of Saving Mes Aynak.
So why is this such a compelling film? First, Mes Aynak is in Afghanistan and it
doesn’t take too much of an imagination to know just how wandering out into the
wilderness can be so very dangerous.
Especially so when you learn that Mes Aynak is on the ancient travel
routes now frequented by the Taliban — a group known for their brutality and
destruction of ancient archaeological sites in the region.
So just going to this remote place can be a life-threatening
experience all onto itself. Now add in
the fact that Mes Aynak sits on top of a mountain of copper. An even more ancient set of ruins sits below
the Buddhist settlement … perhaps dating back an additional 2,000 years — there
is evidence that this group mined and smelted copper. Temori and his fellow archaeologists have
been working to tease out the secrets of the ancient Buddhist city (and what
lies beneath).
The copper is estimated to be worth right around $100
billion dollars. In a country dirt poor
who could possibly care about some old dusty ruins when there is that much
money to be had. You see the problem …
the problem that Qadir Temori and his fellow researchers are faced with — death
and greed!
Huffman takes us to this amazing place (literally a city in
the sky) that is faced with destruction to get at the copper or death and
destruction awaits from religious fanatics, who could care less about the
history and heritage of Afghan treasure.
Bonus features include an additional 45 minutes of footage
not used in the final cut. Saving
Mes Aynak is presented in Dari with English subtitles.
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