Documentary Genre: Exploration and Discovery, Historical Films, Cinema Verite, and science film
Role of the Filmmaker: Explorer
Burning Question: How different are Neanderthals from modern day humans?
Visual Imagery: Flashbacks, scientists working, b-roll on humans, animations
Theme: New discoveries have found how Neanderthals are more similar to Modern Humans than we originally thought.
Stakes: Are neanderthals stupid and hairy? Or are they intelligent and strong distant relatives?
Editing Style: When they were showing the results of the Neanderthals DNA I thought they did it in a pretty unique way. When they did shots of multiple people in front of the white wall it amazed me how uniform they were.
Questions, emotions, thoughts that this film provoked in you as viewer:
I took biology anthropology which discussed some about neanderthals. So I was comparing it with information I remember from that class, but they still seemed to have new information I have not heard before.
I watched this twice in order to have a better understanding of the documentary. During the first time I was hanging on to every word because this kind of stuff fascinates me. Somethings seemed off but the film was going so fast I couldn’t think about it much. On the second time around the documentary seems more off and feels like it has some little holes. It is for an audience who are pretty new to the concept and don’t have a ton of background in evaluation.
