THE MYSTERY OF EASTER ISLAND RAPA NUI 1940s DOCUMENTARY FILM 53534

About

Produced by Simmel-Meservey and with a story by Jackson Winter, THE MYSTERY OF EASTER ISLAND is an obscure documentary look at the stone statues that populate Easter Island. It likely dates to the late 1940s or early 1950s. The film does not present any answers to the questions it raises, and has many false assumptions that have been disproven by modern research. Still, it is an interesting look at the island in the mid-20th century.

The Compania Explotadora de las Isla de Pascua, the Chilean company that administrates the Island, is mentioned in a prologue.

The film takes a look at the barren landscape of Rapa Nui and its iconic statues. At 2:30, the native village of Hanga Roa is shown. At 3:00, the annual visit of a supply boat from Chile is seen. The boat services a sheep farm on the island. At 4:30, an extinct volcano is shown where the quarries for the statues are seen. At 4:50, tourists visit some of the 485 statues found on the island. At 6:30, a statue is seen in the quarry, including at 6:40 a gigantic 66 foot statue. At 7:00, tools for making the statues are seen. At 7:20, a BBQ is conducted for visiting tourists. At 8:00, remains of ahu are seen on the island, where they have fallen. At 11:15, the question of how the "monsters" were moved is raised, given that there were no draft animals available and no trees on the island.

Easter Island (Rapa Nui: Rapa Nui, Spanish: Isla de Pascua) is a Chilean island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle in Oceania. Easter Island is famous for its 887 extant monumental statues, called moai, created by the early Rapa Nui people. In 1995, UNESCO named Easter Island a World Heritage Site, with much of the island protected within Rapa Nui National Park.

Polynesian people most likely settled on Easter Island sometime between 700 and 1100 CE, and created a thriving and industrious culture as evidenced by the island's numerous enormous stone moai and other artifacts. However, human activity, the introduction of the Polynesian rat and overpopulation led to gradual deforestation and extinction of natural resources which severely weakened the Rapa Nui civilization. By the time of European arrival in 1722, the island's population had dropped to 2,000–3,000 from an estimated high of approximately 15,000 just a century earlier. European diseases and Peruvian slave raiding in the 1860s further reduced the Rapa Nui population, to a low of only 111 inhabitants in 1877.

Easter Island is one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world.[6] The nearest inhabited land (around 50 residents in 2013) is Pitcairn Island, 2,075 kilometres (1,289 mi) away; the nearest town with a population over 500 is Rikitea, on the island of Mangareva, 2,606 km (1,619 mi) away; the nearest continental point lies in central Chile, 3,512 kilometres (2,182 mi) away.

Easter Island is a special territory of Chile that was annexed in 1888. Administratively, it belongs to the Valparaíso Region, and, more specifically, it is the only commune of the Province Isla de Pascua.[8] According to the 2012 Chilean census, the island has about 5,800 residents, of whom some 60 percent are descendants of the aboriginal Rapa Nui. Easter Island is considered part of Insular Chile.

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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com

Human-made No record of this work says a model made it. What this means.

Archive

Internet Archive, in Ephemeral films

Licence or status

The Internet Archive states none for this item.

Language

English

Who can watch

The archive gives no rating. Invisible Network shows it to Teens profiles and older, judged from its collection and subjects. How films are placed