SCREENING ROOM

Micronesian canoe off Satawal

Steve Thomas photo

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The Navigators

A fascinating documentary about the world's greatest seafaring people.

click here for

Scene from The Navigators

Building a canoe

Filming interview with Mau Piailug on Satawal, Caroline Islands

The Navigators

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The Navigators  The Story of the Film

The Navigators  Reviews and Press Clippings

To purchase The Navigators go to

Documentary Educational Resources

http://www.der.org/

Producer Sam Low and Director Boyd Estus confer about a scene on Satawal

Associate Producer Sheila Curran Bernard  in Hawaii

Soundman Eric Taylor with archeologist Patrick Kirch in the Halawa Valley - Molokai, Hawaii.

Assistant Cameraman Roger Haydock on SV Dorcas with men from Satawal.

Fast Cars

A NOVA documentary about the quest for speed at the world famous Indianapolis 500 automobile race.

Filming Fast Cars - at Laguna Seca, California

Fast Cars - The genesis of a NOVA documentary

Film and Television   Sam Low's Filmography

The Ancient Mariners

a film by Sam Low

for the Odyssey Series of PBS programs

Diver leaps from barge anchored over Byzantine shipwreck near Yassi Ada, Turkey

Cinematographer and director, Werner Bundschuh, filming for the Ancient Mariners in Greece

The Ancient Mariners follows nautical archaeologists as they excavate three shipwrecks in the depths of the Eastern Mediterranean and as they analyze their finds in the laboratory. The three ships, dating from before 300 B.C. to 1025 A.D., tell the story of a significant change in the methods of ship construction - a change reflecting broader alterations in social, economic, and political conditions.

At Serse Liman, Turkey, George Bass, the founder of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA), led an investigation of a ship that sank in 1025 A.D. As we see it before excavation begins, the wreck is barely noticeable on the seabed; but the ship's cargo, mostly broken glass, appears as the archaeologist divers remove silt with an airlift. Showing the huge collection at Bodrum, Turkey, Bass explains that the ship must have been carrying glass for eventual recycling. Frederick Van Dorninick shows the elaborate methods for preserving the fragile pieces of the ship's hull on land. Michael Katzev, also associated with INA, excavated a Greek merchant ship that sank off Kyrenia on Cypress in the fourth century, B.C. The ship carried a cargo of wine in large amphoras. Richard Steffy learns from making a model of the ship that it was built quite differently from the Serce Liman ship. This "hull-first" construction process required not only more labor but a great deal more wood. Lionel Casson tells us that the craftsmanship of the Kyrenia ship was made possible by the use of slave labor, on which Greek society then depended.

George Bass had earlier excavated another shipwreck near Yassi Ada, an island off Turkey, that helps to explain the change in ship construction. The Yassi Ada ship dates from the seventh century A.D. and its construction fell somewhere between hull-first and later frame-first methods.

Film Review

THE NEW YORK TIMES

TV: 'ANCIENT MARINERS'
By RICHARD F. SHEPARD
Published: September 29, 1981

MAN made a road out of the barrier of the sea by building ships, and this most adventurous and ancient pursuit opens the new season of ''Odyssey,'' the series that looks at history and life through the lens of anthropology. ''The Ancient Mariners,'' at 9 o'clock tonight on WNET-TV, achieves a fascination worthy of its topic in sound and picture.

The episode shows how modern scientists have recreated from wreckage found at sea bottom near Greece, Turkey and Cyprus the way ancient shipbuilders built the sturdy craft that carried cargoes. They have also learned about the crews and the civilizations the ships served.

Three antique ships are involved in this program, one from the fourth century B.C., another from A.D. 625 and the third from the 11th century. The scenes shift from underwater sites to the Nautical Archeology Institute at Texas A & M University. From blackened fragments of wood, from thousands of lumpish remains of amphora containers, entire ships and cargoes are reconstructed. Dick Steffy, a marine historian and craftsman, makes models from the evidence and tells how he learns about the thinking of the ancient shipmakers by trying to reproduce their work.

This is more than a program about ships and history; it is a most absorbing account of research process, of forensic investigation, of the scientific mind applied to the humanities. ''Odyssey'' is good at this sort of thing, and this first showing, with Michael Ambrosino as executive producer, Sam Low as producer and Werner Bundschuh as director, gets the season off to a fine start.

To purchase The Ancient Mariners please see: http://www.der.org/films/ancient-mariners.html

Out of the Past

Eight films for PBS on the rise and fall of

the ancient Maya

Cambridge Studios and WQED-Pittsburgh

Sam Low - Series Producer

filming excavation of a burial in Copan, Honduras

for Out of the Past

filming for Out of the Past

atop a pyramid in Tikal, Guatemala

Off-line editing at Cambridge Studios north