From Nubia to La Plata. The unlikely journey of Abraham Rosenvasser.

It could be thought that this documentary is the last achievement of the Egyptologist Abraham Rosenvasser (1896 - 1983), head of the Franco-Argentine expedition that between 1961 and 1963 carried out a unique mission to rescue the Egyptian ruins in the north of Sudan, before that were covered by the waters of the Aswan Dam, Egypt. But it is also fair to recognize the merit of documentary filmmaker Ricardo Preve, who was able to create a work that captivates the viewer by transmitting a human and scientific message.

Argentines in North Africa and experts on that Egyptian civilization that still amazes us today with its monumental remains and new finds, preserved in the sands of an immense desert? Yes, there were and today too. The merit of the writer and director was to have found that information to build a solid and attractive story, and without resigning truthfulness.

HILARIO: When did he discover this story?

RICARDO PREVE: I was in Sudan, in 2018, filming another documentary, "Coming Home", referring to an Italian soldier from World War II who died on a desert island in the Red Sea, where he was buried while, in his homeland, the mother waited for him until the last of his days. Seventy years later, his remains located, they returned to his place in the world. In contact with archaeologists and anthropologists, they mentioned the Franco-Argentine mission to me. But since there are many language variations in Sudan, at first I thought it was a French and Algerian mission. We all know that Algiers was a French colony and I thought, they must have been associated. But when in one location I identified an old photograph that indicated “in the Franco-Argentine mission”, I understood that the local experts were right, and that I was ignorant of everything about that episode that they knew so well.

With some Internet searches I learned that between 1961 and 1963, at the request of UNESCO, Argentine archaeologists worked on the rescue of an Egyptian temple located in Aksha, just twenty kilometers from Wadi Halfa, in ancient Nubia, well to the north of present-day Sudan. And already interested in that story, I made contact with the daughter of the head of the mission, Elsa Rosenvasser Feher, a physicist based in the United States who was enthusiastic about the idea and financed the project for us.

H: You have been filming documentaries in different parts of the world for more than two decades; Abraham Rosenvasser's story will have caught you from the start. But we would like to know how he started in this world of cinema.

P: In an unexpected way. I am another Argentine transformed by the crisis of 2001. My training has nothing to do with this activity, I am an agronomist specialized in forestry engineering and in those years I was the president of a North American company that, faced with the Argentine situation, decided to sell and withdraw from the country. Shortly after and not knowing what to do, I remember that the filmmaker Fernando Spiner, a friend, invited me to have a coffee and suggested that I accompany him with the production of his future work, “Adiós, querida Luna”. I was beginning to go through the most important change of my life, I think. Without having studied cinema, insecure, and without life projects, I launched into that adventure and here I am. Along the way I have had incredible luck; I settled in Charlottesville, a small town in Virginia (USA), located two hours by car from Washington and several National Geographic producers lived there, with whom I linked up by joining the production team as a "fixer", who is responsible for to solve all the local problems, in my case, in Argentina and Uruguay.

I worked with producers who had their office walls covered in Emmys, learning as I went. In the documentary “Mummy Children. Sacrificed in Salta” -also from National Geographic Television-, I was co-producer and I enjoyed its success, since it was between the first and second place among the most watched programs of the signal. Later, I was the director of “The Ghosts of Machu Pichu” in a co-production with RAI and National Geographic Television; I filmed the Argentine part of “Mengele's Twins” (which was also filmed in Brazil) and I joined Nat Geo Kids with the children's series “Aventura Mundial”.

H: And finally your independent production company arrived. He has worked on numerous projects related to health issues.

P: Yes, from the beginning I got involved in the subject of Chagas disease, a disease that is endemic in our country, and of particular relevance in Salta, a province where I spent a lot of time as a child. I found out that a childhood friend was sick with Chagas, and it seemed particularly important to me to try to expose a health problem that is difficult to see, and to show in cinematographic language, because Chagas rarely has manifestations that are visible. That's why my first documentary was called "Chagas / Un Mal Escondido." I then collaborated with Doctors Without Borders on other health film projects, for example about pediatric AIDS in Kenya. And, finally, they called me from Qatari television (Al Jazeera English) to revisit the subject of Chagas with a documentary ("Chagas / A Silent Assassin") sponsored by Leo Messi.

From La Plata to Sudan

Already with an important background of accomplishments and achievements -he has won numerous awards at international festivals-, Preve launched himself after a new adventure retracing the steps of the Argentine Egyptologist Abraham Rosenvasser, and the Covid 19 pandemic arrived. But against all odds he managed to comply with the outlined plan; He incorporated old footage, interviewed Rosenvasser's daughter in the United States and his disciple Perla Fuscaldo, a renowned Egyptologist, in Argentina. Here he also visited the fields of Carlos Casares - birthplace of the protagonist of the story - and toured the rooms of the Museum of Natural Sciences of La Plata, where the remains donated by Sudan were finally installed after the rescue carried out by the mission Franco-Argentine.

The director of the film De la Nubia a La Plata in the deposits of the Buenos Aires museum. Photography Ricardo Preve.

A true Jewish gaucho -his parents came from present-day Ukraine-, Rosenvasser went to school every morning with his three brothers, mounted on a horse, bareback... At the age of twenty-one he graduated as a history teacher and the following year , as a lawyer, since he studied both degrees simultaneously. "He exchanged correspondence in German, French, English, Italian... -recalls his daughter, indicating her ease in learning languages ​​in a self-taught way- and in the same way he studied and interpreted hieroglyphs". In 1934 he deciphered a hieroglyph that was in the National Museum of Natural History Bernardino Rivadavia, in Buenos Aires. He discovered in the text the adventures of a traveler, Sinuhe, a main character in those stories that captivated the Egyptians. His essay was published in a specialized journal and thus he entered the radar of European Egyptologists.

Years later, when Egypt decided to build the Aswan dam on the Nile River, a huge project that would flood important archaeological treasures, UNESCO launched a protection campaign seeking the support of the international community, and Rosenvasser was there, working at the time on the Faculty of Humanities of the National University of La Plata, and at the Conicet. He proposed to Professor Vercoutter, a prominent French Egyptologist, to organize a Franco-Argentine mission, with the European expert as leader; His daughter remembers him in the documentary, who participated in the first of the three campaigns, the one carried out in 1961. That binational team of scientists obtained from the government of Sudan the concession of a settlement where the temple of Aksha was located, of the time of Ramses II (1279 - 1213 before Christ), in the splendor of the Egyptian civilization. And the Argentines worked there, Rosenvasser learned Arabic, the whole group enjoyed a very pleasant relationship and every Sunday they exchanged visits with the other international missions. However, the following year something happened and the French withdrew; It was then that the Egyptologist born in the Jewish colony of Carlos Casares sought to replace the Gauls and among the Argentines who traveled, one of the great archaeologists did so, Alberto Rex González (1918 – 2012), who in another discovery of the documentary, relates in an old film of that formative experience in his life, proud of having saved those testimonies that were found in an area that was later covered -he expresses it- under one hundred and thirty meters of water.

Vintage photography. The walls come to light. Aksha temple. Photography courtesy Ricardo Preve.

There were two campaigns without the French, in 1962 and 1963, with very good results; the path from the temple to the Nile was discovered and the walls were located, bringing the entire settlement to light. The most representative archaeological testimonies were transferred to the Khartoum Museum and by agreement with the Sudanese government, France and Argentina removed a representative number of pieces. Thirty crates arrived in our country and remained stowed for ten years in a basement in Buenos Aires - oh, Argentina! -until they were transferred to the city of La Plata, in whose Museum dependent on the National University it was possible to prepare a space where Rosenvasser himself with his students assembled those treasures for the first time for their exhibition.

Ricardo Preve tells us that in South America there was only one other institution with Egyptian works related in its hierarchy to those gathered in Argentina. “They were in the National Museum of Brazil, the one that in 2018 was destroyed by fire. Now only those of the Museo de La Plata remain. And with the efforts made by Elsa Rosenvasser, funds were obtained to make a new montage, with another perspective; work that was carried out between 2006 and 2013. It is very moving to see today in those rooms the remains that were found in Sudan. We used film material taken in that North African country when we worked on the shooting of "Coming Home" and we filmed between August and September 2021 with a second unit of Sudanese, the interview with Dr. Hatim Elnour, the general manager of Sudan Antiquities and Museums, interview recorded at the Khartoum Museum, where the walls moved from the original site of the Aksha temple are located.”

Hatim Elnour in the interview. The Sudanese specialist recalls his first encounter with the testimonies of the Aksha temple. Photography courtesy Ricardo Preve.

In the film, the Sudanese archaeologist recalls his first experience with the testimonies saved from destruction, when as a child he visited the museum with his school. Already in his role as scientist, he states: “Meanings are revealed through the process of studying these remains...interrogating mute matter. Even a piece of broken pottery can be worth more than its weight in gold to me, because I am not looking for the material value, but rather the historical value that I can extract.” And in reference to Rosenvasser, happy to work with the vestiges saved by the Franco-Argentine mission, he highlights the importance of the Argentine specialist by "putting her stamp on bringing the temple back to life." Hieroglyphics carved into the limestone document Ramesses II's visit to the region, then the southern border of his domain.

Indeed, in Sudan, ancient Nubia, and in Argentina, the temple regained its life. In the Museo de La Plata his remains are a marvelous testimony to the glory of the Egyptian empire; the largest of them weighs 1200 kilograms. The monumentality of those vestiges is exposed in front of the camera directed by Preve and under the guidance of local specialists Perla Fuscaldo, Silvia Ametrano and María Marta Reca, who speak proudly recalling situations and presenting the stelae and porticos exhibited in the Aksha Hall.

H: “From Nubia to La Plata” now begins its tour of international festivals. What do you expect from this new production, Ricardo, and when will the public be able to enjoy it?