FARMINGTON – Western Maine Audubon Society will feature a film, “The Song of the Drum,” at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 19, in Room C23, Roberts Learning Center, University of Maine at Farmington.

The petroglyphs of Maine are pictures that Native American shamans cut into rock ledges, using hammerstones made of a harder rock. Archaeologist Mark Hedden, a specialist in prehistoric rock art with the Maine Historic Preservation Commission, has drawn on his 25 years of studying Maine petroglyphs to make the film and write the script for it.

Film, Hedden believes, is the ideal medium – better than slides or illustrated exhibits – for giving audiences a realistic impression of rock art. Film brings the audience closer to the natural setting where petroglyphs are found, in this case the seaside ledges of Machias Bay.

In the old legends handed down by generation after generation of Passamaquoddy elders, the ledges were known as the houses where spirits with special powers resided. Birds could be messengers to the spirits above. Diving sea mammals carried prayers for help to the deeps.

All the images cut into the rock there are rooted in the need for support from the spirit world and in the sense of the sacred, of the unknowable mysteries of creation, of the ever shifting forms of natural energies, of life.

The film is narrated by Passamaquoddy elder and linguist Wayne Newell. Hedden will introduce the film and answer questions following the showing.