Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Atlas (1976)

A lot of things happened in years ending with 76.  I was born in 1976.  200 years before that, America broke away from England.  Also, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon, was published.  Atlas was produced to coincide with the 200th anniversary of its publication.

It’s a short video, only 2½ minutes long.  The video shows how Rome grew from a city to an empire and back again.  Most versions seem to repeat the video.  The first time has narration.  The second time is just the animation with music.  (The version on the Eames YouTube Channel has Russian subtitles.)

The animation is pretty simple.  It shows Rome and the surrounding empires and groups, like the Huns, and how each group changed over the corresponding years.  The time frame runs from circa 500 B.C. to A.D. 500.  The short is safe for people of all ages.  It’s just a map with changing lines and either narration or music.

There’s nothing objectionable like fights.  It’s not particularly elaborate, but it is at least somewhat informative.  It helps people visualize what the map looked like over the span of a millennium.  It’s exactly the kind of thing that a teacher might show to a third-grade class.

IMDb doesn’t list who the narrator is and I can’t find any information that would suggest a particular name.  I would imagine that it’s narrated by Charles Eames only because the voice is male.  If anyone can tell me definitively, please leave a comment.


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