Standing With Stones is a fantastic documentary on the megaliths of Great Britain and Ireland, filmed over the course of a two year tour of the monuments by film-maker Michael Bott and presenter Rupert Soskin. I’ve mentioned (and recommended) it a number of times here on TDG as a worthwhile DVD or file download to purchase, but it has now been made available online absolutely free, so you have no reason not to watch this most excellent doco now.
If you’re in a hurry to watch the entire thing, head to the Vimeo album that Michael Bott has put together. Otherwise, I’ll be seralising it here on TDG by posting two of the ‘regional’ instalments each week for a more relaxed digestion of this wonderful subject area. Today I’ve posted the first two instalments: at the top of this post is “Part 1: The West Country and Dartmoor”, and at the bottom of the post is “Part 2: Southern England” (which of course features many of the most well-known sites, including Stonehenge, Silbury Hill, Avebury and the Uffington White Horse).
If you watch and enjoy the film, make sure you do the right thing by heading to the Standing With Stones website and donating a dollar or ten to the film-makers – I’m sure you’ll agree its richly deserved, and we should be encouraging and helping to fund more features like this one by open-minded, independent people. They’re still to recover production costs from two years of filming, so if you can spare the change DO IT! A heads-up though – use the PayPal button under the ‘Free to View’ heading on the right of the page, as the other one seems to be wrongly linked.
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.
Update: Watch Part 2 here.
Link: Standing With Stones
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