I’ve mentioned the excellent Standing with Stones documentary previously here on TDG, but wanted to let everyone know that it is now available as a direct internet download as well, for just £8.99/$US14. Worth every dollar too – not academic, and not New Age, it’s more a relaxed drive around the British Isles and Ireland with a friend who knows a bit about megalithic history and fills you in as you travel about. Host Rupert Soskin is happy to offer a theory here and there, but makes clear that it’s pretty much all speculative. Even at two and a quarter hours in length, it still really skims the surface of this fascinating, but oft-neglected part of the history of that region. Would be in my top five recommended purchases for the year.
Produced and directed by documentary film-maker Michael Bott and presented by naturalist and explorer Rupert Soskin, it is a first-hand account from Rupert of a journey taken through the British Isles and Ireland, starting at the tip of Cornwall and ending on the Scottish Isles, visiting over 100 Neolithic and Bronze age monuments en route.
Beautiful to look at (the British Isles have seldom looked this good) and managing (we think) to be both enlightening and entertaining, the film explores the diversity and wonder of these extraordinary enigmatic structures. It also looks at some of the theories and nonsenses which attach to them.
The entire project was conceived and realised (as in filmed, edited, music specially composed and CGI graphics created) entirely by just us two guys with a camera, a camper van, two very understanding wives – and a passion for stones. But though we may have had a boys own adventure, we believe we’ve also produced a superb broadcast quality movie. Rupert has a deep knowledge of his subject, but also a refreshingly open-minded attitude to the who, the how and especially the why of the stones’ construction.
You can download a free five-minute sample from the feature, but really…I recommend just paying the money and enjoying the whole thing. Absolutely wonderful.
