ORF-E
English, French
1 x 55 min

The ability to describe anything, even the unseen, to evoke thoughts and ideas and pass them on, unaltered, to distant generations, such is the tremendous power of writing. It is the culmination of a series of ingenious inventions, refined over the course of human history. Where did this innovation come from, and what could have been its original purpose? Is it really indispensable? The challenge is taken up by primary school pupils. The film explores the first material signs created by humans. It traces the evolution of codes, from cave paintings to the first fragments of “sentences” engraved 10,000 years ago. It describes the arrival of Mesopotamian tablets, and the enigmatic tablets engraved in Europe during the Bronze Age. Hieroglyphics appear, and are transformed; the Phoenician alphabet is transmitted to the Greeks, and later evolves into Latin. We discover examples of writing on surprising media such as Inca quipus, transcriptions encoded in knots on a set of cords. Writing was born independently in several places on the planet, alongside an enduring oral tradition which has become a fundamental component of our modern world with the arrival of audiovisual media and the digital revolution.