Stunning Aerial Footage of Jerusalem, Israel & the Occupied Territories

This is probably not news (I believe other blogs have pointed to it before), but it was news to me. A friend just sent me a link to this 7-minute trailer/teaser for an upcoming IMAX/3D film apparently now in production. It is worth a look. Here’s the link:

http://vimeo.com/15034110

The video “flies” down Wadi Kidron, past the ancient Mar Saba monastery.

 Those posting the video write:

After a year of research and preparation, the giant screen film JERUSALEM advanced into production with an unprecedented aerial shoot throughout Israel and the West Bank. Scheduled for worldwide release in 2013, the film will take audiences on a spectacular tour of the Holy Land and the city once believed* to lie at the center of the world.

From the flavor of the film, it seems designed primarily for tourism promotion — it will be interesting to see at what sorts of venues it will actually be shown. One small complaint: The voice-over narration engages one of my (admittedly picky) pet peeves, with the statement that “Solomon built the first Jewish Temple”. This sort of pseudo-historical shorthand is cropping up more and more, but no historian or other scholar worth his (or her) salt uses the term “Jews” or “Jewish” to refer to the period before the Babylonian Exile: The people were Israelites or, locally, perhaps “Judeans”. And their Temple, alas — the First Temple, destroyed in 586 BC — did not survive quite long enough to become “Jewish”!

If you follow the video tour in the trailer, here are the LOCATIONS shown (in addition to the city of Jerusalem itself), in order:  The high-level aqueduct of Caesarea Maritima; Jaffa; the Upper Jordan River; Capernaum; the Dead Sea; Masada; Mar Saba monastery on Wadi Kidron; the theater of Casarea Maritima; the Mount of Beatitudes; Nabi Samwil, the traditional tomb of Samuel; Masada (again); and the Mount of Olives (here from the east, a perspective not often seen; note the street completely filled with pilgrims making the annual Palm Sunday procession!).

UPDATE / August 2013

The “Jerusalem” IMAX/3D movie, now under the National Geographic banner, is slated for initial release in September 2013, in museums, science centers and similar venues with the facilities to do it justice.

Here’s a link to the official web-site, with a new, shorter official trailer:

http://www.jerusalemthemovie.com/

Where you can see the movie (check the above site for updates)

Theater Name	City	Release Date
Museum of Science	Boston, MA	September, 2013
Discovery Place	Charlotte, NC	September, 2013
IMAX® Theater at the Palisades	West Nyack, NY	September, 2013
Cradle of Aviation	Garden City, NY	September, 2013
Pacific Science Center	Seattle, WA	September, 2013
St. Louis Science Center	St. Louis, MO	October, 2013
Science Spectrum	Lubbock, TX	October, 2013
Houston Museum of Natural Science	Houston, TX	October, 2013
Hastings Musuem	Hastings, NE	November, 2013
Putnam Museum	Davenport, IA	November, 2013
BFI IMAX® Cinema	London, UK	January, 2014

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* For some of us, it still does!