Good morning, there was a relatively new documentary about Cleopatra that I am going to do a review on. It is called The Traces of Cleopatra and the run time for this documentary is 50:29. Here goes nothing!
A group of scholars comes together to investigate new evidence that is emerging about the life of Cleopatra. This investigation combines new techniques and technology to explore the mystery of Cleopatra. Cleopatra was Egypt’s last ruler before it fell to Rome. Who really was Cleopatra? Where were her origins? How did she come to power? How did she exert her power? Where was she buried? The documentary kicks off with a trip to a library in Cairo. A pair of experts go to this library to look at documents to find more information on Cleopatra. They are looking for a French book called The Description of Egypt, written after the Napoleonic Wars. The document talks her about having Greek origins and how she adopted Egyptian culture to gain power and rule Egypt. After this, the two experts go to a temple site to learn more about the Ptolemaic dynasty. This temple site shows the demonstration of the Ptolemies’ power over Egypt and how they embarked on their own building projects. Cleopatra participated in her own building projects and ruled from Alexandria. Alexandria was well known for its beauty as well as its lighthouse and the library. The Ancient City would have been wiped out by an earthquake and flood. Cleopatra’s palace was a victim of this flood as well as Alexander the Great’s tomb. Marine Archeologists have made a few discoveries from Cleopatra’s Alexandria in the water. This was a very fast-moving documentary and bounced from topic to topic rapidly. It made it very difficult to follow. The experts part and one expert works with a computer graphics expert to view a map of where the lighthouse of Alexandria was located. This map shows the sea floor and the fractured ruins of a building. Then the experts come together and explore the modern library of Alexandria. Cleopatra was an avid reader and she spoke several languages. She most likely would have used the Alexandria library and all the knowledge it contained to assist her with her rule. The library at Alexandria was established by the first Ptolemy ruler and it was to bring together all the knowledge of the world. This documentary finally slowed down a bit when talking about the library at Alexandria. Then there was a discussion on the Romans and how they watched her every move. One Roman historian wrote a history about Cleopatra. The AI voice points out that he was born 76 years after Cleopatra’s death and belonged to people who have sworn enemies of her. The expert has learned that Cleopatra was a woman of great power and a political mind. These were things that Romans did not like. This section was a challenge to follow along too. However, the AI narrator points out that Cleopatra worked to get people to admire her. In previous documentaries on Cleopatra, Cleopatra would portray herself in the image of the goddess Isis. If you want to know more about Cleopatra, continue to watch more of this documentary. Wow, AI has come far but not come far enough and you can immediately tell that the narration was an AI voice. The AI was very off-putting and the filmmakers should have got a real human to narrate the episode. I almost stopped reviewing the documentary because of the narration, this goes to show that good narration for a documentary goes a long way. The AI also forced me to stop the documentary in parts to rewind. There were times I drifted away from the documentary too so I had to stop and rewind for that reason too. This was also very fast-paced and it felt disjointed at times because of the face pace. If I found it a challenge to pay attention, I am sure that a student will find it hard to pay attention as well. It documentary used clips from movies about Cleopatra, I will admit that it was kind of interesting. Overall, I do not recommend showing this documentary to a class it is just too fast, the AI is off-putting and hard to pay attention to.
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The purpose of this blog is to share information on what can be used in a classroom, private school, or home school setting as well as serve as a portfolio of my personal and professional work. The reviews are my opinions and should be treated as such. I just want to provide a tool for teachers to select documentaries for their classrooms. |