Newswise — Two-time Emmy award winner - and University of Maryland English professor - Michael Olmert has done it again. This time he's won the New York Festivals' "Gold World Medal" as the screenwriter for "Walking With Cavemen" - a Discovery Channel documentary.
At the time of its premier last June, the program was the most-watched documentary on basic cable for 2003. Some 14.7 million people watched at least a part of the program's three premier telecasts. Walking with Cavemen is a co-production of the Discovery Channel and the BBC.
Walking with Cavemen takes viewers back some 100,000 generations to really get "up close and personal" with our human ancestors.
For Professor Olmert, the award speaks volumes about the power cable TV can wield when it devotes enough time to cover a subject that is both fascinating and close-to-home:
"This may be one of the most important puzzles facing us, uncovering our deep past. I mean, as people, we think of our families going back, most of us, to our great grandfathers. But, when you really consider it, our real forebears go back thousands of generations, to deep time."
The New York Festivals is the "organizer of the world´s largest international awards competitions for broadcast and non-broadcast media." Festivals' spokesperson Anne White says that "The judges at the New York Festivals felt (Walking with Cavemen) had an excellent script - helped by an excellent narration by Alec Baldwin - and awarded it the Gold World Medal in (the best writing) category." The award was presented January 30 in New York City.
Professor Michael Olmert holds a PhD in medieval English literature from Maryland. He is a frequent contributor to Smithsonian Magazine and the Washington Post. He is also a prodigious screenwriter with two two Emmies already in hand. Professor Olmert is a specialist in English literature with a stong interest in the connections between literature and history.
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