Press Releases
ITALIAN CENTER OF THE WEST,
The Sister City relationship, Torino & Salt Lake City
Utah's Former Vice Consul of Italy
Dr. Giovanni G. Maschero

Free Lecture Series
“Out of the Ashes.”
Giovanni Tata, Ph.D.
Monday, March 21, 2011, Time 6:30 pm
451 STATE St. - Room 335
Salt Lake City, UT 84111


Giovanni Tata is the Executive producer of the “Out of the Ashes.” This documentary, which has won two international awards and a prestigious Bronze Telly Award during 2004, tells the history of the Herculaneum papyri as well as the story of how BYU's Center for the Preservation of Ancient Religious Texts (CPART, a sister organization of FARMS) has applied multispectral imaging technology to the scrolls.

Produced in association with the Biblioteca Nazionale “Vittorio Emanuele III” di Napoli and The Institute for the Study and Preservation of Ancient Religious Texts at Brigham Young University, Out of the Ashes tells a compelling story about the loss and recovery of the papyrus scrolls burned and buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. The carbonized scrolls, the first Greek papyri revealed to modern Europe, were rediscovered 251 years ago during the Bourbon excavation of the Villa dei Papiri. In the 21st century, as space-age technologies reveal text unseen by the human eye for nearly 2,000 years, a new question emerges: Is there another library still buried at Herculaneum?

The new scoop reported in the documentary is the recent application of multi-spectral digital imaging to the Herculaneum Papyri. At the invitation of the late Professor Marcello Gigante, the founder of the Centro Internazionale per lo Studio dei Papiri Ercolanesi and the effective dean of Herculaneum studies for the last thirty years of his life, scholars from Brigham Young University contracted with the Italian National Library at Naples to make digital images of the carbonized scrolls archived in the Officina dei Papiri. The multi-spectral imaging technology creates a legible electronic image of otherwise illegibly carbonized scrolls.

To tell the story most effectively, Giovanni Tata, Julie Walker, and photographer Brian Wilcox took their HDTV camera on the road. In careful interviews, they gathered information from those who know the story of the papyri best: Richard Janko, David Armstrong, Jeff Fish, Dirk Obbink, David Blank, Catherine Atherton, Steve Booras, Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Rick Jones, Marion True, Antonio DeSimone, and of course Marcello Gigante. From extensive interviews, Julie Walker and the editor Christopher Rawson have gleaned essential information, though in their entirety the tapes are extraordinarily valuable as well. David Blank’s interview is packed with information on the history of the scrolls, especially since their discovery in 1752. The on-site interview with DeSimone, who excavated and published the Villa dei Papiri in the 1990’s, is simply masterful. And the two filmed interviews with Gigante, in his famously industrious study and on-site at Herculaneum, are priceless records now cherished by his colleagues in Naples.

more information.
Giovanni Tata, Ph.D.
Director, Creative Works
Intellectual Property Services
Brigham Young University
3760 HBLL
Provo, Utah 84602-6854
(801)-422-3724
Fax: (801)-422-0463

Public is welcome, no admission fee
451 STATE St. - Room 335
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
Please Use The EAST entrance

Refreshments
RSVP ph 801-364-8259
The Italian Center is grateful for partially funded by the ZAP tax program Salt Lake County

ITALIAN CENTER OF THE WEST is a non profit 501 (c) (3) corporation.