Popol Vuh:
The Creation Myth of the Maya
AWARDS
Natl. Educational Film Festival Gold Apple Award
Latin American Studies Assoc. Award of Merit
Society for Visual Anthropology Award CINE Golden Eagle Award
Native American Film Festival Honoree
American Anthropological Assn. honoree
CINE Golden Eagle Award
Amlin’s passion for Maya culture and ancient Maya art began on a trip to Guatemala in the 1970s. She has spent considerable time in Maya communities, and provided refuge in her home for friends during the Guatemalan Maya genocides of the 1980s. At this time, Amlin was gifted with the chance to share their beliefs with the world to help stop the genocide.
During the late ‘70s and ‘80s, Amlin and other researchers on early Maya civilization realized that ancient Maya art, particularly Classic period (400-900 A.D.) painted pottery, illustrated stories still known among contemporary Maya people, most particularly the story of creation.
This story is best known from a rare 16th century manuscript, the Popol Vuh, or Quiché Maya Book of Council - the most complete of traditional histories to survive the colonial period. Literally every Maya community possessed a similar document recording the ancestral past of their community.
Inspired by this epic narrative of primordial time and Maya artistry, Amlin and her collaborators embarked on their own 13-year epic journey to create this classic, award-winning film. The exquisite hand-drawn and painted animation is carefully based upon the indigenous artwork that inspired Amlin, both capturing and honoring the character of Maya graphic representation.
— Thanks to Heather Orr
REVIEWS
The film introduces the Maya and relates their entire tale, beginning with the creation of the world and concluding with the victory of the Hero Twins over the evils lords of the Underworld.
“Patricia Amlin has made this great American Indian myth one that a person of any age - child, teenager, adult — can appreciate. The film makes the tale accessible to a wide public not diminishing it but by visualizing it.” - Professor Mary Miller, Yale University
“An artistic and intellectual triumph.” - Peter Allen, Professor of Anthropology, Rhode Island College, in Archaeology
“This beautiful and historic film gives life to the mythic history and art of the Maya. Students and teachers of Native American culture, history, and literature must see it.” - Lawanna Trout, Director, Institute in American Indian Culture and History, The Newberry Library, Chicago
"A great and ground-breaking film." — Professor Michael Coe, Yale University