List of the kirghize films screened in 2001

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

KIRGHIZE CINEMA
(2001 program)

On 17 November 1941, an order from the People's Commissars Council of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Kirghizstan established the first newsreel studios in Frunze [today's Bishkek, capital city of Kirghizstan]. During the war years (1941-1945), the studios made many films about the workers who stayed behind the lines. This footage was put together with pictures of the soldiers fighting on the front and became newsreels.

From the second half of the Fifties, a large number of film-makers from Moscow and Leningrad came to Kirghizstan and got interested in Kirghiz culture which they portrayed in their films. By doing so, they trained the first national film officers. The films of the time were oversimplified and superficial, but they allowed Kirghiz cinema to acquire more and more expertise in film production.

In the Sixties, Chinguiz Aitmatov's books started to be very popular in the Soviet Union as well as around the world. The literary creation, which fostered self-esteem in our country, had a deep impact on Kirghiz cinema. In 1963, L. Chepitko made Scorching Heat based on a short story by Chinguiz Aitmatov. It became an award-winning film at the Karlovy-Vary and Frankfurt festivals (1964). The following year, A. Mikhalkov-Kontchalovsky also based his film The First Master on an Aitmatov short story and won an award at the Venice film festival. It was mainly the esthetic qualities of these films which attracted international recognition. It is important to note that the Kirghiz temperament was shown in a rather lenient way.

In the same decade, a new generation of film-makers returned from the Moscow Film Institute to work in the local studios. In 1964, M. Ubukeev made Tough Crossing, quite a daring film for the time as it dealt with the 1916 Kirghiz rebellion when the Russian army exterminated half the population, an event official history never mentioned. Cunningly beguiling censorship, the director portrayed the fahtherland in a particular manner, where blind women became guides. The film tells the story of a minor people deprived of its right to choose. It is the starting point of Kirghiz cinema's long history.

B. Chamchiev based his Gunshots at the Karash Pass on Mukhtar Auezov's classic novel. The film-maker was able to break away from the social clichŽs displayed in other films made at the time and created specific characters opposing each other: the poor and the rich, both lost in their illusions.

Another Aitmatov short story provided the basis for G. Bazarov's The Mother's Field. Despite a stage adaptation which was very successful in all Soviet theatres at the time, the film was practically ignored. Cinema did not seem to be considered a proper art form yet.

T. Okeev's The Sky of Our Childhood and The Fierce One are the most well-known films among the Kirghiz audience. Avoiding Socialist clichŽs and extraordinary stories, the film-maker described with great talent the Kirghiz people's life and spirit, its expectations and suffering.

U. Ibraimov's By the Old Mill was generally considered as half successful. Probably because the heroin managed to strengthen her spirit by tapping into traditional values rather than in great Communist ideas. This was considered as surrender by the ideology of the time.

International awards have given strength to Kirghiz cinema, as well as a strong impulse to free itself from the indigenous people complex. In spite of the ideological barriers, the Kirghiz cinema of the Soviet era was able to represent the people on the screen and to describe the evolution of its conscience. It seems film has become a tool for self-assertion for a small people in the greater world. Kirghiz cinema kept surprising the rest of the world with its poetic realism until the Eighties. But the new generation of film-makers was not able to maintain the esthetic efforts of their elders, nor could they resist ideological pressure.

In the Nineties, after the collapse of the USSR, funding for cinema stopped. The young film-makers who managed to finance their films followed two directions. Some dealt with issues it was forbidden to talk about before, like B. Aitkuluev's The Landlady in which some Kirghiz people seem to be strangers in their own land. Others tried to perpetuate and improve the best of the Kirghiz film tradition, like A. Abdykalykov in Where Is Your House, Snail?.

Although mass culture has been spreading, Kirghiz film in the 1990s did its best to protect its own identity. Films by A. Abdykalykov, B. Karagulov, T. Birnazarov, E. Abdyjaparov received awards in all sorts of festivals. Kirghiz cinema has created a worthwhile history for itself. Since its first newsreels, it has given birth to its own film style and its own vision of the world.

Ernst Abdyjaparov,
film-maker Talip Ibraimov, editor, Kirghizfilm Studios