Overland: A Documentary Experience
Durham, North Carolina | Film Feature
Adventure, Documentary
Join us on our mission to make a cinematic doc that weaves together the human stories of falconers as they immerse in untamed landscapes on 4 continents, in 4K. Help us create an epic, intimate and textured movie about an ancient tradition and a rare partnership with the wild. Tax-Deductible.
Overland: A Documentary Experience
Durham, North Carolina | Film Feature
Adventure, Documentary
1 Campaigns | North Carolina, United States
Green Light
This campaign raised $20,556 for production. Follow the filmmaker to receive future updates on this project.
156 supporters | followers
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Join us on our mission to make a cinematic doc that weaves together the human stories of falconers as they immerse in untamed landscapes on 4 continents, in 4K. Help us create an epic, intimate and textured movie about an ancient tradition and a rare partnership with the wild. Tax-Deductible.
In Partnership With
About The Project
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
The Story
Below are glimpses of the American Story and the UAE Story...
Whether speeding across the desert in a fleet of Land Rovers, thundering down a mountain on horseback, stalking prey in a misty forest, breeding hybrids, training falcons with drones, or having long fireside discussions over tea, today’s falconer is a complex archetype. At once poet, philosopher, hunter, conservationist, warrior, engineer, naturalist ‐ he is always adapting to protect his ancient practice.
Once upon a time someone, somewhere saw a falcon and thought, “I will trap that bird and train it to hunt for me.” The falcon is the fastest creature on earth; it pulses with a primal instinct to attack, and has zero‐tolerance for human ill will. As a result, the successful falconer is unwavering, calm, and sensitive. He relies on a tradition of cultural exchange and roughly 6000 years of trial and error by his predecessors.
OVERLAND explores this ancient art as it has been handed from father to son by Bedouin tribes, ancient armies, merchants, diplomats, and royals. With a cast of strong characters, the story spans the Silk Road from Mongolia to the Persian Gulf, across the Mediterranean from Sicily to Scotland. In the modern era of soaring cities and dwindling wilderness, falconry is one of the last great animal‐human partnerships. The falconer approaches the puzzles of nature with innovation and humility. Our character-driven story delves into the practice of this fragile tradition via the dramatic passions of a dynamic cast falconers embedded in enchanting landscapes around the world, and the curious chain that connects them. The audience is transported on an epic, intimate and textured journey using falconry to explore and connect guarded societies, foreign landscapes and ancient souls.
Falconry is creeping into the popular cultural zeitgeist and the time is right for OVERLAND to capture the hearts of audiences around the world. They will be surprised by what they learn – not only about this mysterious and revered ancient art form, but about our interconnectedness and humanity.
So far we have garnered the institutional support of the National Endowment for the Humanities Bridging Cultures through Film program with a generous development grant and the North Carolina Arts Council.
CREATE WITH US
The style of our production, the value we place on groundbreaking imagery and navigating difficult terrain and access, our far-flung locations and the incredible creative team that we have assembled to tell this story add up to a signfinicant budget.
We know our characters. We know where we need to film, and when. We have a plan and a vision. And, we hope that you will get involved with our project to support us as we shake-up documentary filmmaking to create an immersive and unforgettable experience.
REVERE LA NOUE AND ELISABETH HAVILAND JAMES WITH EAGLE HUNTERS LAUREN MCGOUGH AND CHASE DELLES IN KANSAS
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
Store and Protect our Footage
Costs $1,000
We have data, and lots of it. And we need to protect it. On average, we film 1-2 TB per day of material in the field.
Fly Us !
Costs $5,000
Our motley, lean crew needs to fly to Mongolia, UAE, Scotland... If you would like to donate frequent flier miles, please do so under LOAN!
Pay the Film Crew!
Costs $5,000
We have a terrific, talented team and we pay fair rates. To everyone. Around the World.
Rent the Film Gear!
Costs $5,000
4K. Special lenses. Drones. Give us access to the tools that'll allow us to tell an epic story in one of the most remote places on earth!
Feed Us!
Costs $2,000
Film crews work really hard and get really hungry. Keep ours flourishing, starting off the day with harvsaiaarull (Mongolian donuts).
House Us!
Costs $2,000
A comfortable, dry place to call home on location is critical to our success - a yurt in Mongolia, a hotel in Dubai, an RV in the states...
Share this update!
About This Team
The filmmakers working in collaboration to produce and direct this project, Elisabeth Haviland James and Revere La Noue, met while making a film about the quest for the Ivory‐billed woodpecker in the sticky swamps of Arkansas in 2006, and married on a goat farm 4 years later. In 2014 they launched THE FALCONBRIDGE COLLECTION, LLC to house their new documentary film, OVERLAND, about falconers around the world. Producer Christopher Behlau joined “team Falconbridge” in 2015.
REVERE LA NOUE, ELISABETH HAVILAND JAMES AND CHRISTOPHER BEHLAU AT THE SCOTTISH DOCUMENTARY INSTITUTE PITCH FORUM AT THE EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL
ELISABETH HAVILAND JAMES
Elisabeth Haviland James is a film producer, director and editor based in Durham, North Carolina, where her company Thornapple Films is headquartered.
In 2015, James was awarded one of two film fellowships by the North Carolina Arts Council. She is the Producer and Editor of Althea, (dir Rex Miller), a feature documentary about pioneering tennis icon Althea Gibson, which premiered at DOCNYC, and was PBS’ American Masters season premiere episode in September 2015. She was awarded a WIFTA for editing Althea. Her documentary feature‐directing debut, In So Many Words, premiered at the 2013 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and has screened at festivals, museums and conferences around the country. James was the Producer and Editor of The Loving Story (co‐produced with HBO) for which she was short‐listed for the Academy Award, winner of a George Foster Peabody Award and an Emmy Award (Best Historic Program) and nominated for two additional Emmy Awards (Best Documentary, Best Editing). The film has screened in festivals around the United States (Full Frame, TriBeCa, Silverdocs, Traverse City, Virginia, Hamptons, among dozens of others), and as a participant in the Sundance Film Forward program, with the US Department of State and with the American Film Showcase. It premiered on Valentine’s Day, 2012 on HBO. She was a consulting producer and pre‐production researcher on location in the Dzangha‐Sangha National Park in Central African Republic to the narrative feature Oka!. Other recent credits include Producer of The Good Fight and co‐Producer of The Lord God Bird (both dir. George Butler). She served as Director of Photography and Editor on the 2003 documentary Brothers in Arms, featuring now Secretary of State, then Senator John Kerry.
James is a graduate of the M.A. Program in Documentary Film and Video at Stanford University. In 1999, she earned a BSFS with honors from the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where she majored in Culture and Politics. She is fluent in French, speaks some Spanish and has led tours for art museums, botanic gardens and cultural institutions around the world, including to France, Spain, Italy, Russia, Argentina, Mexico, Japan, Korea, Thailand and Vietnam. James has taught documentary filmmaking at Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies and as an artist in residence at the Oklahoma Arts Institute; she has also served as a guest lecturer for the State Department in Central Asia.
REVERE LA NOUE
Revere La Noue is a filmmaker and artist working on a wide array of creative projects all over the world. He is Hellbent on pushing the frontier of visual storytelling in documentary through artful innovation and cross‐collaboration.
As a filmmaker, Mr. La Noue has collaborated with a wide range of organizations including National Geographic, NBC Sports, The New Yorker Magazine, The National Science Foundation, The National Institutes for Child Health and Human Development, The University System of Maryland, and Stanford University Medical School. He is proud that his work has made a strong social impact as an educational tool, a case for conservation, a vessel of inspiration for communities in need of support around the country, and as a medical resource saving lives on five continents around the globe. He worked with George Butler and White Mountain Films as a field producer of The Lord God Bird documenting the controversial search for the Ivory‐Billed Woodpecker and as an editor and co‐producer of The Good Fight, a verité exploration of the legacy of Bobby Bowden. He was the Art Director and Producer of In So Many Words, a southern gothic hybrid documentary by Elisabeth Haviland James and Thornapple Films. He served for two years as a creative advisor to HBO’s The Loving Story, which was short‐listed for an Academy Award, won an Emmy and a Peabody Award in 2013. He is frequently called upon to consult with filmmakers, artists and business leaders to help refine their creative vision and develop alternative models of storytelling.
As an artist, he has lived, trained, and worked in Washington, D.C., Palo Alto, NYC, and now operates from a private studio outside of Durham, NC. Shortly after finishing his graduate work at Stanford University, he launched his art business in New York City with a collection of his work featuring icons of American history and folklore. Within the first year, pieces from the series were hung in public and private collections in 42 states. In 2011, he was commissioned to create a four‐story, 6500 sqft. fine art print of stampeding broncos that wrapped around the corner of a city block; it is the largest publicly displayed fine art print on record. In 2012, he exhibited his first solo show with paintings, prints, and photographs featuring dance and architecture in Buenos Aires, Argentina. His exhibition of experimental photography depicting the city of Detroit was part of a show at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum that drew a record number 100,000 visitors in two weeks. In the spring of 2014, he unveiled Targyle: series one, a collaboration with renowned fashion designer Alexander Julian featuring five 10 ft tapestries, a 200 sq ft canvas, 15 original paintings as well as several prototypes for a line of men’s ties and women’s scarves. In the summer of 2014, he debuted a new show of paintings called EMOTICON, Feeling Unsimplified, made in collaboration with dancers and choreographers from around the country to explore the human silhouette as a highly nuanced communication device. Most recently, in partnership with Duke University, he unveiled a 300 sq ft permanent installation featuring his impressionistic depiction of “Les Diables Bleus” a WWI era French military unit that inspired the University’s Blue Devil nickname.
Revere La Noue has a Bachelor’s Degree from the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Notre Dame, where he played Division I lacrosse. He has a Master’s Degree from the Documentary Film and Video Program at Stanford University.
CHRISTOPHER BEHLAU
Christopher Behlau is the founder and principle of Matter Films, headquartered in Los Angeles, currently working with directors/producers Revere La Noue and Elisabeth Haviland James to produce Overland – a feature documentary film about the ancient art of falconry.
Behlau’s passion for documentaries as fundraiser, cinematographer and producer has taken him across the globe from the blazing jungles of India and Bangladesh, where he worked with legendary documentary director George Butler (Pumping Iron) to film the making of and produce Tiger, Tiger, a feature documentary, previewing at the 2015 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, which follows world renowned big cat conservationist, Dr. Alan Rabinowitz on perhaps his last adventure, into the Sundarbans ‐ one of the least‐known tiger habitats left on earth. Behlau’s latest project saw him associate produce, alongside editor/producer Elisabeth Haviland James, Althea (dir Rex Miller), a feature documentary about pioneering tennis icon Althea Gibson, which premiered in Fall of 2014 at DOCNYC, and will be broadcast on the prestigious American Masters PBS series in September 2015. Behlau has also worked as a fundraising consultant and creative advisor on various projects, includingon Cartel Land (dir Matthew Heineman), which won best director and cinematographer at the Sundance Film Festival 2015, Citizen Koch (dir Tia Lessin/Carl Deal), Golham (dir Mitra Tabrizian) and We are Many (dir Amir Amirani).
Behlau graduated magna cum laude from Regent’s University London in International Business and aside from film production, has experience in sectors as diverse as agriculture, real‐estate, energy and fine art. He is fluent in German and speaks conversational Spanish.
Current Team
Incentives
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
The Story
Below are glimpses of the American Story and the UAE Story...
Whether speeding across the desert in a fleet of Land Rovers, thundering down a mountain on horseback, stalking prey in a misty forest, breeding hybrids, training falcons with drones, or having long fireside discussions over tea, today’s falconer is a complex archetype. At once poet, philosopher, hunter, conservationist, warrior, engineer, naturalist ‐ he is always adapting to protect his ancient practice.
Once upon a time someone, somewhere saw a falcon and thought, “I will trap that bird and train it to hunt for me.” The falcon is the fastest creature on earth; it pulses with a primal instinct to attack, and has zero‐tolerance for human ill will. As a result, the successful falconer is unwavering, calm, and sensitive. He relies on a tradition of cultural exchange and roughly 6000 years of trial and error by his predecessors.
OVERLAND explores this ancient art as it has been handed from father to son by Bedouin tribes, ancient armies, merchants, diplomats, and royals. With a cast of strong characters, the story spans the Silk Road from Mongolia to the Persian Gulf, across the Mediterranean from Sicily to Scotland. In the modern era of soaring cities and dwindling wilderness, falconry is one of the last great animal‐human partnerships. The falconer approaches the puzzles of nature with innovation and humility. Our character-driven story delves into the practice of this fragile tradition via the dramatic passions of a dynamic cast falconers embedded in enchanting landscapes around the world, and the curious chain that connects them. The audience is transported on an epic, intimate and textured journey using falconry to explore and connect guarded societies, foreign landscapes and ancient souls.
Falconry is creeping into the popular cultural zeitgeist and the time is right for OVERLAND to capture the hearts of audiences around the world. They will be surprised by what they learn – not only about this mysterious and revered ancient art form, but about our interconnectedness and humanity.
So far we have garnered the institutional support of the National Endowment for the Humanities Bridging Cultures through Film program with a generous development grant and the North Carolina Arts Council.
CREATE WITH US
The style of our production, the value we place on groundbreaking imagery and navigating difficult terrain and access, our far-flung locations and the incredible creative team that we have assembled to tell this story add up to a signfinicant budget.
We know our characters. We know where we need to film, and when. We have a plan and a vision. And, we hope that you will get involved with our project to support us as we shake-up documentary filmmaking to create an immersive and unforgettable experience.
REVERE LA NOUE AND ELISABETH HAVILAND JAMES WITH EAGLE HUNTERS LAUREN MCGOUGH AND CHASE DELLES IN KANSAS
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
Store and Protect our Footage
Costs $1,000
We have data, and lots of it. And we need to protect it. On average, we film 1-2 TB per day of material in the field.
Fly Us !
Costs $5,000
Our motley, lean crew needs to fly to Mongolia, UAE, Scotland... If you would like to donate frequent flier miles, please do so under LOAN!
Pay the Film Crew!
Costs $5,000
We have a terrific, talented team and we pay fair rates. To everyone. Around the World.
Rent the Film Gear!
Costs $5,000
4K. Special lenses. Drones. Give us access to the tools that'll allow us to tell an epic story in one of the most remote places on earth!
Feed Us!
Costs $2,000
Film crews work really hard and get really hungry. Keep ours flourishing, starting off the day with harvsaiaarull (Mongolian donuts).
House Us!
Costs $2,000
A comfortable, dry place to call home on location is critical to our success - a yurt in Mongolia, a hotel in Dubai, an RV in the states...
Share this update!
About This Team
The filmmakers working in collaboration to produce and direct this project, Elisabeth Haviland James and Revere La Noue, met while making a film about the quest for the Ivory‐billed woodpecker in the sticky swamps of Arkansas in 2006, and married on a goat farm 4 years later. In 2014 they launched THE FALCONBRIDGE COLLECTION, LLC to house their new documentary film, OVERLAND, about falconers around the world. Producer Christopher Behlau joined “team Falconbridge” in 2015.
REVERE LA NOUE, ELISABETH HAVILAND JAMES AND CHRISTOPHER BEHLAU AT THE SCOTTISH DOCUMENTARY INSTITUTE PITCH FORUM AT THE EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL
ELISABETH HAVILAND JAMES
Elisabeth Haviland James is a film producer, director and editor based in Durham, North Carolina, where her company Thornapple Films is headquartered.
In 2015, James was awarded one of two film fellowships by the North Carolina Arts Council. She is the Producer and Editor of Althea, (dir Rex Miller), a feature documentary about pioneering tennis icon Althea Gibson, which premiered at DOCNYC, and was PBS’ American Masters season premiere episode in September 2015. She was awarded a WIFTA for editing Althea. Her documentary feature‐directing debut, In So Many Words, premiered at the 2013 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and has screened at festivals, museums and conferences around the country. James was the Producer and Editor of The Loving Story (co‐produced with HBO) for which she was short‐listed for the Academy Award, winner of a George Foster Peabody Award and an Emmy Award (Best Historic Program) and nominated for two additional Emmy Awards (Best Documentary, Best Editing). The film has screened in festivals around the United States (Full Frame, TriBeCa, Silverdocs, Traverse City, Virginia, Hamptons, among dozens of others), and as a participant in the Sundance Film Forward program, with the US Department of State and with the American Film Showcase. It premiered on Valentine’s Day, 2012 on HBO. She was a consulting producer and pre‐production researcher on location in the Dzangha‐Sangha National Park in Central African Republic to the narrative feature Oka!. Other recent credits include Producer of The Good Fight and co‐Producer of The Lord God Bird (both dir. George Butler). She served as Director of Photography and Editor on the 2003 documentary Brothers in Arms, featuring now Secretary of State, then Senator John Kerry.
James is a graduate of the M.A. Program in Documentary Film and Video at Stanford University. In 1999, she earned a BSFS with honors from the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where she majored in Culture and Politics. She is fluent in French, speaks some Spanish and has led tours for art museums, botanic gardens and cultural institutions around the world, including to France, Spain, Italy, Russia, Argentina, Mexico, Japan, Korea, Thailand and Vietnam. James has taught documentary filmmaking at Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies and as an artist in residence at the Oklahoma Arts Institute; she has also served as a guest lecturer for the State Department in Central Asia.
REVERE LA NOUE
Revere La Noue is a filmmaker and artist working on a wide array of creative projects all over the world. He is Hellbent on pushing the frontier of visual storytelling in documentary through artful innovation and cross‐collaboration.
As a filmmaker, Mr. La Noue has collaborated with a wide range of organizations including National Geographic, NBC Sports, The New Yorker Magazine, The National Science Foundation, The National Institutes for Child Health and Human Development, The University System of Maryland, and Stanford University Medical School. He is proud that his work has made a strong social impact as an educational tool, a case for conservation, a vessel of inspiration for communities in need of support around the country, and as a medical resource saving lives on five continents around the globe. He worked with George Butler and White Mountain Films as a field producer of The Lord God Bird documenting the controversial search for the Ivory‐Billed Woodpecker and as an editor and co‐producer of The Good Fight, a verité exploration of the legacy of Bobby Bowden. He was the Art Director and Producer of In So Many Words, a southern gothic hybrid documentary by Elisabeth Haviland James and Thornapple Films. He served for two years as a creative advisor to HBO’s The Loving Story, which was short‐listed for an Academy Award, won an Emmy and a Peabody Award in 2013. He is frequently called upon to consult with filmmakers, artists and business leaders to help refine their creative vision and develop alternative models of storytelling.
As an artist, he has lived, trained, and worked in Washington, D.C., Palo Alto, NYC, and now operates from a private studio outside of Durham, NC. Shortly after finishing his graduate work at Stanford University, he launched his art business in New York City with a collection of his work featuring icons of American history and folklore. Within the first year, pieces from the series were hung in public and private collections in 42 states. In 2011, he was commissioned to create a four‐story, 6500 sqft. fine art print of stampeding broncos that wrapped around the corner of a city block; it is the largest publicly displayed fine art print on record. In 2012, he exhibited his first solo show with paintings, prints, and photographs featuring dance and architecture in Buenos Aires, Argentina. His exhibition of experimental photography depicting the city of Detroit was part of a show at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum that drew a record number 100,000 visitors in two weeks. In the spring of 2014, he unveiled Targyle: series one, a collaboration with renowned fashion designer Alexander Julian featuring five 10 ft tapestries, a 200 sq ft canvas, 15 original paintings as well as several prototypes for a line of men’s ties and women’s scarves. In the summer of 2014, he debuted a new show of paintings called EMOTICON, Feeling Unsimplified, made in collaboration with dancers and choreographers from around the country to explore the human silhouette as a highly nuanced communication device. Most recently, in partnership with Duke University, he unveiled a 300 sq ft permanent installation featuring his impressionistic depiction of “Les Diables Bleus” a WWI era French military unit that inspired the University’s Blue Devil nickname.
Revere La Noue has a Bachelor’s Degree from the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Notre Dame, where he played Division I lacrosse. He has a Master’s Degree from the Documentary Film and Video Program at Stanford University.
CHRISTOPHER BEHLAU
Christopher Behlau is the founder and principle of Matter Films, headquartered in Los Angeles, currently working with directors/producers Revere La Noue and Elisabeth Haviland James to produce Overland – a feature documentary film about the ancient art of falconry.
Behlau’s passion for documentaries as fundraiser, cinematographer and producer has taken him across the globe from the blazing jungles of India and Bangladesh, where he worked with legendary documentary director George Butler (Pumping Iron) to film the making of and produce Tiger, Tiger, a feature documentary, previewing at the 2015 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, which follows world renowned big cat conservationist, Dr. Alan Rabinowitz on perhaps his last adventure, into the Sundarbans ‐ one of the least‐known tiger habitats left on earth. Behlau’s latest project saw him associate produce, alongside editor/producer Elisabeth Haviland James, Althea (dir Rex Miller), a feature documentary about pioneering tennis icon Althea Gibson, which premiered in Fall of 2014 at DOCNYC, and will be broadcast on the prestigious American Masters PBS series in September 2015. Behlau has also worked as a fundraising consultant and creative advisor on various projects, includingon Cartel Land (dir Matthew Heineman), which won best director and cinematographer at the Sundance Film Festival 2015, Citizen Koch (dir Tia Lessin/Carl Deal), Golham (dir Mitra Tabrizian) and We are Many (dir Amir Amirani).
Behlau graduated magna cum laude from Regent’s University London in International Business and aside from film production, has experience in sectors as diverse as agriculture, real‐estate, energy and fine art. He is fluent in German and speaks conversational Spanish.