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Sahar - The Awakening: Project History
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| 1990 | Drawing on the language of film, Maja Vukoje completes a series of paintings in which her alter ego is shown at key moments of a thriller set in the Middle East. Two of these paintings feature in the title sequence of Sahar - The Awakening. |
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| Attending the International Student Film Festival in Tel Aviv Alexander Curtis and Maja Vukoje experience the Middle East first hand. From this trip and Maja Vukoje's paintings the idea for a film is born. | |
| 1991 | Money for production is raised and the material for the film shot in Acre, Jerusalem and the desert East of Jerusalem. |
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| 1992 | A version of the film is completed but is not released or shown at film festivals. |
| 1992-94 | The project is reworked in a literary form by Alexander Curtis, resulting in The Englishman's Travelling Library, a novelle published as an e-book by Gangan Books Australia, www.gangan.com . |
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| Maja Vukoje completes a series of paintings with her alter ego set against a North African background. | |
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| After a trip to the U.S.A. Maja Vukoje completes a third and final series of alter ego paintings, inspired by the desert of Arizona and her confrontation with the reality and myth of the "Wild West". | |
| 1998 & 2004 |
Inspired by the Dreaming and Songlines of the Aborigines and by the Ethopian Kerbra Nagast, Alexander Curtis writes A Songline in the Libyan Desert, a fictive poem describing King Solomon's journey through the Libyan desert as he searches for the Queen of Sheba, whom he wishes to see once more. The route of this journey, shown on a map, is used in Sahar - The Awakening, accompanied by a spoken fragment of the poem. |
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| 2000 - 03 | Filming and post-production of the DVD - Project At the Rainbow’s Foot. Many stylistic aspects of the project anticipate Sahar - The Awakening. Passages of electro-acustic music composed by Stephen Ferguson for this project are also used in Sahar - The Awakening. |
| 2000 - 03 | Filming and post-production of the DVD - Project At the Rainbow’s Foot. Many stylistic aspects of the project anticipate Sahar - The Awakening. Passages of electro-acustic music composed by Stephen Ferguson for this project are also used in Sahar - The Awakening. |
| 2005 | Alexander Curtis re-edits the material shot in Israel and writes the texts that constitute the Englishman's monologue. |
| 2008 | Alexander Curtis and Maja Vukoje complete post- production. |
