Archive: Arts & Entertainment

Cinemapolis and Cornell Cinema will present a sneak preview of 'Echoes of the Empire: Beyond Genghis Khan' prior to the film’s international release.  Opening night will be on Friday, October 16, and the movie will run one week. Proceeds from this screening will support Cinemapolis and PhotoSynthesis, two long standing arts organizations. There will be a Zoom Q&A with the director and producer.

This movie was made by the team that created the New York Times Critics’ Picks “They Call It Myanmar” and “Angkor Awakens.” These films have been broadcast on the BBC and shown in theaters around the world.

Film director Robert H. Lieberman takes us on a journey into this vast and little-known country. Stars of the film include many prominent Mongolian voices, as well as New York Times bestselling author Jack Weatherford ('Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World'). The film leads us through the remarkable evolution of Genghis Khan’s Mongol Empire—a realm that once encompassed all of Asia, the Middle East and even parts of Europe. Intimate portraits of today’s Mongolians, young and old, provide us with revealing insights into the minds of these former warriors and nomads and the challenges they face in their post-Soviet world.

Lieberman, a novelist, film director and longtime member of the Cornell Physics faculty, began his film career in 1984 with the PBS film 'Faces In A Famine', shot at the height of the Ethiopian famine.

Speaking about this latest movie, he says, “After Ethiopia, this was one of the most physically demanding films I have ever worked on. It meant traveling on rough tracks for often 8 hours a day, camping in a tent below the snow line and sleeping squeezed in with 3 generations of families in their gers (yurts). Not a lot of privacy,” he adds with a smile. “But their welcome was genuine and generous. It will live with me for the rest of my life.”

Producer Deborah C. Hoard is the President of Ithaca-based film studio PhotoSynthesis Productions. Her recent work includes the celebrated features 'Civil Warriors' and 'Re:Thinking'. She is currently producing a documentary about Civil Rights icon Dorothy Foreman Cotton.

“I didn’t travel to Mongolia, but working on Echoes was an extraordinary journey for me—across a stunning landscape and into a fascinating ancient culture,” says Hoard.

v16i38