Arte - Voyage of the Continents Series 2 (2014) Part 1 The Origins of Africa

– Original title “La Valse des Continents” –

“The Earth's great rhythm permeates everything, and man is caught up in it, in spirit as much as in body. ”

This second series of 5 x 52min tells the animated story of the genesis of our continents. This real waltz of land masses sculptures our landscapes. It will take us this time in Africa and in Americas. Since its formation, 4,55 billion years, our Earth is submitted to strengths of an incredible power. The earth's crust is in perpetual evolution, redrawing indefatigably the world map. Continents assemble and part, victims of collisions and tearings. Perceptible movements through earthquakes, through volcanic raids and through tsunamis. In this “tectonic waltz “of lands and seas, real geologic epic, we follow passionate and fascinating scientists. With them, we travel more than a billion years all over the world to reconstitute the puzzle of our continents and understand the indefatigably sculptured grand landscapes. The continents are not eternally fixed in their majesty. Far from being immutable points of reference, they are born, grow, and finally succumb to the effects of time, like living beings. The heart of our planet creates and moves them in a never-ending journey. The continents come together and separate, victims of collisions and tectonic subduction. Life in the mantle can be perceived through earthquakes and tsunamis. From place to place, volcanic action adds a spectacular, often violent touch to the Earth's surface. Around a core as hot as the sun, the Earth's crust is perpetually evolving and redrawing the map of continents and oceans. This four billion year dynamic is perceptible to people who are trained to see it, people with a third eye the eye of the geologist. To understand it, our eyes must be re-educated by looking at some of nature's lessons offered by the Earth, where we can learn to decipher its grandest creations, in landscapes that are continually being sculpted. Via the epic of continental drift, we travel to all 4 corners of the planet, to meet scientists who are carrying out state-of-the-art research on the most emblematic landscapes of each geological event. With these scientists, and thanks to their work, we discover the sites in a new light – landscapes that we often see but rarely look at closely. The journey also establishes the key reference points of life alongside the geologic time scale - the appearance of life, of plants, of terrestrial life, dinosaurs and Man punctuate the geologic time scale.

Directed by Alexis de Favitski ; Co-Produced by La Compagnie des Taxi-Brousse,CNRS Images and ARTE France in participation with CNC,TFO, Ushuaia TV and Discovery Networks Asia Pacific.

Part 1 The Origins of Africa

Africa seems to be a young continent, as it has only been explored since the 19th century in its entirety. It is the first site inhabited by Man, 2 million years ago, and yet the African continent was born during the early childhood of the Earth. After having experienced a violent cataclysm of cosmic origin, Africa found itself trapped in the middle of the other continents. Then, jostled by its neighbours for millions of years, it finally broke free when its crust tore. A story that Steve Richardson tells us thanks to the information he gets from crushed diamonds. After suffering a violent cosmic cataclysm in Vredefort, Rodger Hardt's playground, Africa found itself caught in the middle of every continent in the southern hemisphere. The layers of land carved by the Fish River are an open book on this history. Then, after a short trip to the South Pole that left its mark in the heart of the Namibian deserts that Nicole Ulrich travels through, Africa finally emancipated herself, abandoning Antarctica, Australia, South America, India and Madagascar one after the other, where Karen Samonds searches for the ancestors of lemurs which went through the impact of the Earth's wrath.

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