Entitled “Magellan - Circumnavigating the World,” ZDF Enterprises is offering a 50-minute special from documentary think tank Terra X to mark this major anniversary.
500 years ago, the Portuguese captain Ferdinand Magellan and his men set sail on behalf of the Spanish crown on one of the greatest seafaring adventures in history. At the time, their journey around the world was comparable in importance to space travel in the 20th century. For the first time it was possible to see the true size of our planet. The original goal of the expedition was completely different.
The film by Hannes Schuler, edited by Georg Graffe, follows in the footsteps of the expedition around the world, to Indonesia, Patagonia and Spain. In elaborate re-enactments on the sea-worthy replica of the legendary ship "Victoria," viewers experience the trials and tribulations of the crew up close, gain detailed insights into the last dramatic days of the expedition and learn from the example of a fascinating shipbuilding project how the people in 1500 managed to build sailing ships that were able to travel over 60,000 miles.
“Magellan - Circumnavigating the World“, however, also tells the story of the "actual" circumnavigator, the Basque sailor Sebastian Elcano, who was wrongly forgotten, who brought home the rest of the fleet and crew after Magellan's death on the Spice Islands. On the other hand, the story is not only told from a Eurocentric perspective, but also discusses the impact of colonisation on local people - be it on Tierra del Fuego or in today's Indonesia - with local interviewees.
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