Posted on Reuters: News Aug 17th 2011
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/17/idUS269735214920110817
The Mexican government is releasing state-held secrets about the end of the Mayan calendar to the makers of a documentary, "Revelations of the Mayans 2012 and Beyond," TheWrap has learned.
The information -- protected for 80 years -- is expected to reveal Mayan beliefs in future catastrophes and wisdom characterized as "shocking," producer Raul Julia-Levy, son of actor Raul Julia, told TheWrap.
The end of the Mayan calendar in December 2012 has long given rise to theories and speculation about the end of the world.
The agreement will allow Julia-Levy to film in never-before-seen locations.
"The Mayans used to construct one pyramid over another," tourism minister for the Mexican state of Campeche Luis Augusto Garcia Rosado told TheWrap. "In the site at Calakmul (pictured below right), workers for INAH [the National Institute of Anthropology and History] have discovered rooms inside the pyramid that have never been seen or explored before.
"And we're letting this documentary film there, to see what has been discovered inside the pyramid."
Julia-Levy (above) said he'd been made aware of the secret Mayan information by former Mexican president Vicente Fox -- a friend of his family -- and that it took four years of phone calls to finally get the OK from current president Felipe Calderon.
"This is very important for humanity, not just for Mexico," said Julia-Levy. "This information has been protected for 80 years, and now it's important for people to understand the series of events that are coming, and the consequences for all of us."
The English-language documentary will be directed by Juan Carlos Ruflo (whose other films include the 2006 Sundance winner "In the Pit"), and will begin shooting later this year. Elbert said the filmmakers are talking to investors and waiting for the government to give them their first look at the material and the site.
One big condition from the Mexican government was that the film get an initial theatrical release, which is planned for next fall, said Ed Elbert who is co-producing along with Julia-Levy and Sheila M. McCarthy and executive producer Eduardo Vertiz.
"It has to be released before the end of the Mayan calendar, which is Dec. 21, 2012," said Julia-Levy.
That’s the date that the Mayan calendar -- which some believe predicts a worldwide cataclysm -- comes to the end of a 5,126-year cycle, and resets for another cycle.
Julia-Levy has been specifically ordered not to talk about any of the more mystical possibilities that might strain credulity as Mexico prepares to launch the far-reaching (and tourism-inducing) 2012 Mayan World Program.
At one point, Rosado was quoted in a press release talking about contact between the Mayans and extraterrestrials. That statement has been recalled, and Rosado now paints this as a simpler, more archaeological-oriented documentary.
"At the moment, talk of the Mayans is a big thing," Rosado said. "We've counted over 3 million websites talking about the end of the Mayan calendar, and we have been contacted by a lot of producers who want to come and film on our sites."
The project is similar in some ways to a novel Julia-Levy was writing, variously entitled "Chronicles of the Mayan Tunnel" and "Secrets of the Mayan Time Machine." He and co-producer Elbert were also going to make a 3D movie from that novel starring him and Wesley Snipes, he said in the summer of 2010.
Several reports from that time said the novel was being written with the help of "secret information" never before released by the Mexican government. But in their conversations with TheWrap, Julia-Levy and Elbert dismissed that project as a "Harry Potter"-style piece of fiction with no connection to the current documentary.
That film has been set aside, they said, because Snipes is serving a prison sentence for tax evasion. "We put that film on hold," said Elbert. "Dollar-wise, this documentary might be smaller, but it is based on the release of new and important knowledge from the Mayans."
Asked if the movie will involve aliens, mystical elements or doomsday scenarios that have fueled the popular imagination, Julia-Levy declined to elaborate.
"I'm not allowed to speak about that," he said. "Everything is going to come out in time, but I can't comment on aliens or on 2012.
"I can just say that the Mexican government is preparing to tell humanity and the world things that are critical for us, for the way we live, for the way we've been handling the planet."
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/17/idUS269735214920110817
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Since the Mexican government would consider that to be useful I seriously doubt that would happen.
Mayan film documentary claims proof of aliens
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/26/us-mayan-idUSTRE78P4LK201...
LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) -A new documentary about Mayan civilization will provide evidence of extraterrestrial contact with the ancient culture, according to a Mexican government official and the film's producer.
"Revelations of the Mayans 2012 and Beyond," currently in production, will claim the Mayans had contact with extraterrestrials, producer Raul Julia-Levy revealed to TheWrap.
"Mexico will release codices, artifacts and significant documents with evidence of Mayan and extraterrestrial contact, and all of their information will be corroborated by archaeologists," said Julia-Levy, son of actor Raul Julia.
In a release to TheWrap, Luis Augusto Garcia Rosado, the minister of tourism for the Mexican state of Campeche, said new evidence has emerged "of contact between the Mayans and extraterrestrials, supported by translations of certain codices, which the government has kept secure in underground vaults for some time."
He also spoke, in a phone conversation, of "landing pads in the jungle that are 3,000 years old."
Raul-Julia claims there is proof that the Mayans had intended to lead the planet for thousands of years, but were forced to escape after an invasion by "men of dark intentions," leaving behind evidence of an advanced race.
"The Mexican government is not making this statement on their own -- everything we say, we're going to back it up," he said.
The film will be directed by Juan Carlos Rulfo, who won the Humanitas Prize for "Those Who Remain" in 2009 and the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for International Documentary for "In the Pit" in 2006. Juan Diego Rodriguez Gonzalez will serve as the Guatemalan executive producer, and Eduardo Vertiz as the Mexican executive producer.
And yes, they expect people to take this seriously, because the messages he plans to impart are crucial to human survival, Julia-Levy insisted.
When Julia-Levy, producer Ed Elbert and co-producer Sheila McCarthy announced the Mexican cooperation with their documentary to TheWrap in August, they were circumspect about claims of alien contact, with Julia-Levy admitting he'd been ordered not to say anything about it.
Also for that article, Rosado brushed off a question about alien contact and said his country was simply offering the filmmakers' access to previously unexplored sections of a Mayan site at Calakmul.
Now, not only has Rosado changed his tune, but the Guatemalan government has joined the project, as well, giving access to artifacts and newly discovered prophecies
While the Guatemalan government is not offering information about aliens, it has joined Mexico in supporting the project. "Guatemala, like Mexico, home to the ancient yet advanced Mayan civilization ... has also kept certain provocative archeological discoveries classified, and now believes that it is time to bring forth this information in the new documentary," Guatemala's minister of tourism, Guillermo Novielli Quezada, said in a statement.
He said the country was working with filmmakers "for the good of mankind."
Raul-Julia claims that the order to cooperate came directly from the country's president, Alvaro Colom Caballero.
Guatemala is the site of a large number of pre-Columbian Mayan settlements in the Mirador Basin, including the extensive and highly organized city of El Mirador
In a curious aspect of the new announcement: Guatemalan minister Quezada is quoted as referring to "'Mirador,' the largest pyramid in the world."
But Mirador is not the name of a pyramid. It's the name of the entire settlement, which includes several pyramids, the largest of which is La Danta -- a fact one would expect the Guatemalan minister to know.
"Revelations of the Mayans 2012 and Beyond" begins shooting on November 15 and is due for a theatrical release in late 2012, before the end of the Mayan calendar.
While doomsday scenarios focus on the calendar ending on December 21, 2012, many scholars point out that it simply resets for another 5,126-year cycle on that date.