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Byzantium - The Lost Empire
Director: Ron Johnston
Product Group: Video
Studio: The Learning Channel
ISBN: 6304879946
EAN: 9786304879948
UPC: 723338051130
VHS Tape
Running Time: 200 minutes
Release Date: 1998-03-17
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
SKU: V1987
Condition: Good
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Customer Reviews
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Worthwhile attempt doomed to superficiality
Rating  (3)
Date: 1999-08-22
6 out of 7 customers found this reveiw helpful
I both loved and hated this video. While I applaud its attempt to introduce most of us English-speaking folk to the neglected Byzantine Empire, I mourn its superficiality. It is probably too much to hope that a subject as huge as the 1100 years of the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire could be covered in a few hours, of course. It would probably take 5 times as long to tell an adequate story of a world so remote from our own and of the divisions in world history and religious history caused by Constantine's decision to relocate. Even the great divide to this century can trace its roots to that decision 1,700 years ago. However, the visuals are interesting and it is exciting to see that not everything has vanished, although far too much was destroyed.
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Propaganda?
Rating  (2)
Date: 1999-07-25
2 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
This is an infuriating film. I suppose that it must have been made with the cooperation, and perhaps under the supervision, of the Turkish government: never, not once, is the term "Patriarch of Constantinople" used. Even Patriarch Gennadios, who was doomed by God to be the Patriarch when the Turks conquered Constantinople, is referred to only as a "Greek theologian"!!! I guess that the Turks insisted the proper respect not be shown him, for that would undermine their current campaign to force the Patriarchate to flee their stolen capital. The film's treatment of Orthodox theology is also very poor. Latin terms inappropriate to Orthodox ideas are used throughout, and ideas such as veneration are never distinguished from the more familiar worship. Maybe the writers assumed their audience would be at a rather low intellectual level. Still, the film should have been, could have been, much better. I give it two stars only for the visuals; turn off the sound.
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Rome Unfallen, Just Gone Home
Rating  (5)
Date: 1998-12-03
7 out of 7 customers found this reveiw helpful
This is a story as much about places such as Istanbul, Venice, Kiev and Ancient Rome, as it is about the persistence of ideas through time. Anyone who has ever been dazzled by the facade of St. Mark's Square in Venice, or wondered at the exotic beauty of the onion-domes of Red Square in Moscow, should know that the difference between the two is plunder and patrimony. The Venetians and their surrogates carried off a good deal of the wealth of Byzantium; the Rus were converted by the Byzantines earlier in order to minimize their threat to the holy city. Icons and emperor(tsar) worship were direct descendants of the Roman process of deification of the emperor. Until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, in an impossible, Alamo-like siege where heroic defeat was chosen over compromise with the Moslems, the line from the Caesars was unbroken. Many curious ideas are raised by this series of four episodes on two videos hosted by Brit John Romer. As Eastern Europe has come to seem more accessible recently, and Europe larger, perhaps it would pay those of us who know a bit about the crusades and Rome, to expand our mental horizons. After all, we have hated and suspected the "Evil Empire" for a long time. Unfortunately, almost none of us has understood its true origins, and therefore, we have not understood our own. It isn't just an us and them world, as history teaches. John Romer is a big man who tells a big tale, a hardy companion for the nine-country tour. The musical accompaniment is as haunting as the fragmentary bits of porphory and mosaic icons which adorn the story.
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