Underplayed Gems

In the Footsteps of Marco Polo (2008)

In the Footsteps of Marco Polo poster
Directed by
Denis Belliveau
Genre
documentary film
Country
United States
Runtime
1h 30m
Rating
8.0 of 10 from 4 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
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How it feels

Two men retrace Marco Polo's journey from Venice to China using only land and sea travel. They encounter various people and challenges along the way.

adventurouseducationalhistorictravelogueneutralobservationalpacedgrounded

What happens

In the Footsteps of Marco Polo is a 2008 PBS documentary film detailing Denis Belliveau and Francis O'Donnell's 1993 retracing of Marco Polo's journey from Venice to Anatolia, Persia, India and China. The movie documents the first quest "to visit and document every region Marco Polo claimed to have traveled" using only land and sea methods of transportation. Mike Hale of The New York Times writes that the documentary includes how Belliveau and O'Donnell "encountered Mongol horsemen and hostile Chinese security officers and survived a firefight between Afghan factions. In the spirit of Polo's journey -- and to prove a point regarding the authenticity of his account -- they disdained airplanes, traveling by foot, on horses and camels and by jeep, boat and train." A text by the same name as the video, In the Footsteps of Marco Polo, written by Belliveau and O'Donnell, and published by Rowman & Littlefield, serves as a companion to the documentary film. In the Footsteps of Marco Polo has been used by Belliveau to create a unique interdisciplinary educational curriculum that he presents at schools and libraries across the United States and internationally. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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