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Director : Bernard DAbrigeon
Production : Jean-Pierre Macdo with the participation of Osmane Munif AIDI Foundation for Heritage, Culture, and Sciences
- 2000
Duration : 60
minutes
This film was transmitted by the T.V. channel France
2, it is a special episode about Syria and Jordan in a series of films
of the same name, which relate the story of trains throughout the world,
that have genuine character.
The film starts with a trip by the said train from Damascus to Zabadani through the
charming landscape of river Barada Valley.
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It is part of a line which works regularly since 1906, the year the
locomotive Arkman was made.
It carried
passengers and goods from Damascus to Riyak in the Bekaa Valley in
Lebanon, then split up to two lines, the first continues to Beirut and
the other to Homs and Hama and finally to Aleppo in the north of Syria.
A European amateur has recently tried to exchange the locomotive
Arkman with two modern ones but his attempt did not succeed.
The film records a trip by train setting out from
Damascus, where the Omayyade Mosque represents the splendour of the
Islamic art, and passes near the Krak des Chevaliers then the city of
Apamea with its 1200 columns, which had in its glorious days a
population of 500,000 people, and has witnessed the passage of
Cleopatra and Hannibal.
The train arrives to Aleppo, and the
passengers visit the citadel and the old souks. Then the film records a
touristic trip to Palmyra, the city of queen Zenobia, then Maaloula
where the language of Christ is still spoken, then moves again towards
Bosra Cham, the Roman metropolis with its famous citadel and
amphitheater. The film stresses in its successive scenes the features of
coexistance between the legacy, with its different civilizations, and
the modern renaissance in Syria.
The camera moves along the Hedjaz railway, from Damascus to Jordan in a
trip that includes Amman, the Dead Sea lowest point in the world 392
m below sea level, then to Petra the home of the Nabateans.
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