And the film importantly holds proof that in order to understand our future, we must look at the past — the very distant, millions of years ago, dinosaurs and all, past!
I’ve loved Jeremy Xido’s work ever since I watched his documentary Death Metal Angola in Dubai, back in 2012. The film portrayed the Heavy “Death” Metal music scene in the southern African country of Angola and in the process, pointed to the human toll wars and destruction create. But also offered a way out, as its protagonists expunged their demons through their music and way of life.
Now Xido, an American filmmaker and performance artist who hails from Detroit and is both a Fulbright and Guggenheim fellow, but also studied at the Actor’s Studio in NYC, has a new film. One that again shows us a path to the future while taking us deep into the past. Into the very, very, millions of years ago distant past, before pre-historic times, all the way to the Triassic Period, approximately 230 million years ago. Phew, that was a handful to write and wrap my head around!
Yet The Bones, Xido’s latest quiet masterpiece of the Seventh Art, is a pleasure to watch. Once again, he taps into his inner storyteller to come up with a tale of dinosaurs and fossils that is a joy to behold. But also possesses within it a warning to our future as a society, with all our conflicts (personal and global) and our wanton disregard for the beautiful earth we have inherited and should be caring for. Beware, it’s as if The Bones beams out, cautioning us from the glow of the screen — you could be next. If those magnificently gigantic beasts eventually became extinct, imagine what could happen to our small insignificant race of humans. Just hearing some of the fossils traders and auctioneers talk about their conquests gave me chills. Ominous chills.
After world premiering earlier this year at CPH:DOX in Copenhagen in late March, to glowing reviews from Variety to Screen and everywhere in between, there will be a Surprise Screening at Hot Docs of The Bones this Friday, May 3rd. Find more info and tickets here for the Toronto event.
In the film’s press kit, the journey of the film is explained best:
“A cinematic adventure that reaches from the Mongolian Gobi Desert to the floor of a Paris auction house, The Bones exposes the clash between science, post-colonial reckoning, and hard-headed capitalism.” In fact, watching the fossils be traded and hunted down unscrupulously made me realize how much we take for granted and how much, as the human race, we trample and destroy, without any second thought.
Xido follows Mongolian paleontologist Bolor Minjin, as she teaches her own countrymen and women to care for the fossils they have inherited on their sacred land; but also Nizar Ibrahim, the German-Moroccan vertebrate paleontologist and comparative anatomist who we see leading a team of scientists through Morocco’s Sahara desert, all the while negotiating with the local traders to make sure the fossils end up in the right hands — meaning somewhere they can be cared for but also studied up close. Because, as that ominous sign I stumbled upon once in South Africa is right: “A man without a knowledge of its history is like a zebra without stripes.” Looking much like a donkey, I’d add.
And the fossils of those magnificent beasts from millions of years ago, hold important information on survival, climate change and landscape shifts which turned their habitats into unlivable terrains. Does that sound familiar? Yes, I thought so.
On the other side of Xido’s must-watch documentary are people like French collector and fossil dealer Francois Escuillier, who takes us down the rabbit hole of international fossils fairs and auctions. And also paleontologist Jack Horner — the man on whom the film Jurassic Park is based — who takes fossils apart in order to decode their past, and in the process, show us our future.
The Bones boasts as producer the Oscar, BAFTA, Emmy nominated and Peabody award-winning Ina Fichman of Intuitive Pictures. Her past work includes the acclaimed 2022 documentary Fire of Love, which premiered at Sundance and Palestinian filmmaker Amer Shomali’s inventive hybrid documentary The Wanted 18 (2014).
The music, haunting in its own way and of course, part of the film because of Xido’s excellent understanding of its power, is by Montreal-born composer Ramachandra Borcar, who is also known as Ramasutra and DJ Ram.
The film was shot by several cinematographers, Kaveh Nabatian, Bettina Borgfeld, Johan Legraie, Claire Sanford, Étienne Roussy, Léna Mill Reuillard and Sarah Blum, edited by Nick Taylor, Tom Randaxhe, Jacob Thusen and Boban Chaldovich.
The final product is something both awe inspiring but also highly entertaining, as the film plays like a thriller where our survival is the central theme and whether the hero/heroine will make it out alive in the end is really about our own coming to terms with this magnificent planet, and our place on it, as a human race.
I’ll leave you with the words of Jeremy Xido: “On the surface, there is this voyeuristic fascination with the trade,” the fossils trade “and the fantastical world of dinosaurs, and all who are enmeshed in it—the bone collectors, the fossil dealers, the auction houses, you name it. There are also those dedicated scientists who are at odds with it. But once you scratch the surface, a more profound story emerges about the colonial entanglements of history, science and commerce, which becomes more pertinent in light of the global reckoning of colonialism.”
Images courtesy of Cabula6, used with permission.