We Won! We Won Again!

Four years ago in Cannes, the city famously known for their feature film festival, the “Cannes Corporate Media & TV Awards” was established to honour “the world’s finest corporate films, online media and TV documentaries”. The festival is known for its prestigious participants, innovative and qualitative works, prominent Jury members (Oscar and Emmy winners), and producers from around the world. This year there were entries from over 40 countries and our film “The Resurrection Tomb Mystery” is among the winners in the “Science and Information” category. We don’t yet know if we won Gold, Silver or the Grand Prix as the coveted Dolphin Trophy will only be revealed during the Awards Gala Dinner on October 17 in Cannes, France, but it is an honour to know that our film has been chosen to win one of these awards.

Winning this award means so much, particularly in the “Science and Information” category, as this film truly broke new ground. “The Resurrection Tomb Mystery” follows our 4 year journey as we pushed the envelope of Jerusalem-based archaeology, by building a specialized robotic arm integrated with remote cameras to explore the contents of a near pristine Jesus era tomb.

The motivation to explore this particular tomb in the Talpiot/Armon Ha Natziv area of Jerusalem is that it is a mere 200 feet/60 meters from the controversial “Jesus Family Tomb”. I’ve made two films (“The Lost Tomb of Jesus” and “The Resurrection Tomb Mystery”) and co-written two books on the subject (“The Jesus Family Tomb” and “The Jesus Discovery”). The goal was to see whether a sealed tomb under the patio of a Talpiot building holds any archaeology that may shed light on the “Jesus Family Tomb” nearby. The robotic arm and remote cameras revealed the earliest signs of Christianity – 200 years earlier than the catacombs of Rome! The discoveries include: the earliest Christian cross, the only statement of resurrection faith ever found on a 1st century bone box and the “Sign of Jonah”, the earliest symbol of the followers of Jesus. The proximity of this discovery to the alleged “Jesus Family Tomb” dramatically increases the likelihood that the original findings were correct and that Jesus and his family are buried in Talpiot, east Jerusalem.

As the project manager and director of this film, I would like to thank Professors James Tabor and Rami Arav (co-directors of the excavation), my co-producers Felix Golubev, Ric Bienstock and Nicole Austin, Walter Klassen who designed the robotic arm, and Bill Tarant and the team at GE that specially outfitted the robotic cameras.

Winning this award reinforces all the hard work that was put into this film. Congratulations to everyone who worked so hard!