Islamic Art: Mirror of the Invisible World, a ninety-minute television documentary, takes the viewer to nine countries (Egypt, Israel, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, Iran, Spain, Mali and India) and across 1,400 years of cultural history to explore the astonishing riches of Islamic art and architecture.

Narrated by Academy Award winning actress Susan Sarandon, the film examines the art of religious life in the Islamic world—the soaring beauty of the Mosque—as well as the hidden life inside palaces of the princes and the elite.  In secular art, the power of the rulers, the love of poetry, the beauty of the garden, and the joys of everyday life are represented in an extraordinarily rich array of metalwork, sculpture and ornament.

Co-produced by Unity Productions Foundation, a Maryland foundation whose mission is peace through media, the film provides a window into a tradition of increasing importance to us and sheds light on the shared histories between western and Islamic culture—revealing over time much more continuity than division. This documentary is produced and directed by Academy Award nominee Robert Gardner, who lives in Baltimore.

Gary Vikan, Director of the Walters Museum and Amy Landau, Assistant Curator of Manuscripts appear in the film, along with manuscripts from the collection.

About the Producer Director
Documentary filmmaker Robert Gardner has been nominated for an Academy Award, won three National Emmy Awards, four regional Emmys, a duPont Columbia Award for Journalistic Excellence, the American Association for the Advancement of Science; Science Journalism Award for Television, and a variety of other awards. He has produced commercial and public television for over twenty-five years and lectured on non-fiction television at Johns Hopkins University, Goucher College, The American Film Institute, The American University, and Wesleyan University.