Chris Shearer
Contributing Writer
ASSATEAGUE ISLAND — Smoke from a nearby battlefield drifts over the ancient sands of Egypt. Soldiers are preparing themselves for battle. Arms and armor are being donned. A powerful sultan, nephew of a legendary leader, stands clad in steel and gold and consults with his generals before the army marches to war. He is resolute and decisive laying out his strategy for the struggle ahead. One can almost hear the din of the battle and the clash of armies on the breeze coming off the Nile River. Suddenly, another man’s voice is heard over the sultan’s commands.
“Alright, that looked good. Lets take a look at that on the monitors before we try and shoot it again,” he said.
The Nile delta snaps back to the Eastern Shore hearing Director Alex Kronemer’s voice. The breeze reverts back to the whipping Atlantic wind, and the sands of ancient Egypt are once again the beach dunes of Assateague Island. The beach appears to hover in time between the 13th and the 21st centuries. The very old and the very new intermix freely on the set. Cell phones are seen on tables alongside six foot tall steel spears and wooden wheeled wagons are parked next to four-wheel drive SUV’s. There are seemingly miles of cables running into three flat screen monitors, all located inside a medieval Beaudoin tents.
The Baltimore-based Unity Productions Foundation (UPF) started its first day of shooting PBS docudrama “Sultan and the Saint” at the park on Wednesday. Hollywood-style dressing room trailers are parked next to the ranger station and serve as the command center for the shoot. The over 100-person strong operation is a perpetual motion machine of people and cars. The SUV caravan shuttles all manner of over-sized kitchen cutlery, fantastically expensive digital movie cameras and costume clad extras to the Egyptian battle camp set on the beach.
The “Sultan and the Saint” is a historical docudrama about the inter-faith, and inter-war, relationship between St. Francis of Assisi and Sultan Malik Al-Kamil. The film is set at the mouth of the Nile River, in the year 1219, during the fifth crusade. It dramatizes the dialogues between the preacher and the sultan, which began when St. Francis crossed an active battlefield unarmed to speak with the Sultan about faith. The dialogues eventually spared a trapped crusader army from inevitable destruction, and the Sultan’s unexpected act of peace in sparing the army helped bring the fifth crusade to a close, successfully negotiating an unprecedented truce with the Holy Roman Emperor.
UPF exists to promote interfaith relations. UPF CEO and director of the “Sultan and the Saint” Alex Kronemer discussed his hopes that the project creates a dialogue about war and peace and the nature of humanity.
“We make our films to have an impact.” he said, “We’re hoping that this movie contributes to bridging the divides between us.”
UPF has had nine of its previous projects air on PBS and will coordinate 40 film screenings in collaboration with various national and local partners, including local PBS affiliate stations.
“We look for stories that give people a wider view of both history and the present day,” said Michael Wolfe, executive producer of the project and the president of UPF, when asked about why his company wanted to make a film of this story. “Stereotypes tend to mislead people into thinking that no one can or did ever get along. This story takes place in one of the most prolonged violent periods in East-West, Christian-Muslim relations in history, yet these were people who were still looking for peace.”
The crew will be shooting on Assateague throughout the weekend and producers say much of the reenactment scenes that will be used in the final version of the film will be captured in the next several days.
Dozens of locals were cast as extras in the production, but during the frantic first day of shooting, most were either in the midst of getting fitted for costumes, having makeup applied or taking direction from the film’s producers and director.
It’s not every day Assateague Island is transformed into ancient Egypt, but after just one day on set, the mind races with just how it will look after a little movie magic is applied.