Friday, Apr. 05, 2002

Kennewick Man stars in new film

By Mike Lee Herald staff writer

The old bones are back, this time in film.

Almost a year after the last news about Kennewick Man, two rookie filmmakers from Seattle are debuting a documentary in Richland and Pendleton about the ancient remains.

The 86-minute film, one of several made about the bones in the past five years, is another attempt to tell the emotionally charged story of a 9,000-year-old man found accidentally in the Columbia River.

The story gained a substantial international interest as American Indians, bureaucrats and archaeologists struggled for the rights to the bones in what became a thought-provoking controversy about the modern interpretation of law, religion and science.

"Our hand in shaping it is clearly there, but we give the people who are in the story a pretty good amount of leeway to tell their side of things," said Ryan Purcell, a film lighting technician turned producer. "We didn't want to push things a particular direction," he said. "We wanted to have an open exchange of ideas."

He and co-producer Kyle Carver started following Kennewick Man shortly after the bones were discovered in 1996 and kept working on the film despite sometimes months-long lulls between developments.

"It seems like every time that happened there would be a new turn," Purcell said.

The result of that persistence and interviews with two dozen people closest to the case is Kennewick Man: An Epic Drama of the West. Purcell said the film was well received during a recent film festival in North Carolina, and he also is trying to line up a distributor in anticipation of renewed interest in the subject once a federal judge in Portland finally rules on who should get the Kennewick Man remains.

Said Purcell of his work: "In some ways it exceeds my hopes, and in some ways it has fallen short. It's such a ... deep subject. It's hard to think that a movie can fully do it justice."

For more information, go to www.kennewickmanmovie.com on the Internet.