Festivals: call for entries

Kyrgyz Serial: The contest of scripts (2024_kg)
 
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Call for entries: The VI Film Forum Of Women Film Directors Of Kyrgyzstan

 

Deadline: 01.03.2024

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XI Forum of the young cinema Umut-2024

 

Dates & place: 28.03-01.04.24, 2024, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
Organizer: Cinema Department with support: Interstate humanitarian cooperation fund
Participants: Ex-Soviet countries
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Tuesday, 07 July 2015 00:00

Kinokultura - #49 (July 2015): four reviews about four Kyrgyz films
 
Anna Nieman wrote about "The Move" made by Marat Sarulu, Elena Monastireva-Ansdell wrote about "Kurmanjan Datka: Queen of the Mountains" made by Sadyk Sher-Niyaz, and Gulbara Tolomushova wrote about "Heavenly Nomadic" made by Mirlan Abdykalykov and "Under Heaven" made by Dalmira Tilepbergenova.
 

 

First fragment from review written by Anna Nieman "Beyond the River. A search for home and identity in Marat Sarulu’s The Move":

 

     ...The film opens with a lengthy shot of the river Naryn, the main water artery in Kyrgyzstan. The waters of the river flow steadily and freely in the opening shots of the film, and the daily routine of the two characters flows along with it. Sarulu employs water as both visual and thematic counterpoint to illustrate changing fortunes of his characters while recognizing the role the river, with its dams, reservoirs and hydroelectric stations, has played in the life of Kyrgyzstan—a water-rich nation when compared to its arid neighbors.

 

As the curvature of hills, mimicking the undulating waves below, is about to be replaced by redundant horizontal lines of cables and rails and repetitive geometric patterns of utilitarian architecture, the actual flow of water on screen is restricted in multiple ways. Once the difficult decision to move is made, Sarulu cuts to the massive dam of a hydroelectric power station. The mighty Naryn now trickles slowly, its natural flow interrupted and its brilliant blue gone. Before the departure, Ainazik is given a jar with a goldfish which will accompany her through her trials, mirroring the fate of the girl for whom “home” will come to mean entrapment. Within the city limits, the water struggles to find its way, much like the characters: it’s forced through a faucet, as Perizat toils over a sink in a Chinese restaurant; it swirls, murky and sudsy, in a washing machine of a children’s home...

 

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THE MOVE

 

Second fragment from review written by Elena Monastireva-Ansdell "A Daughter Worth Ten Sons -  Kurmanjan Datka Models Leadership and National Identity for Contemporary Kyrgyzstan":

 

     A beautifully shot epic drama, Sadyk Sher-Niyaz’s sweeping Kurmanjan Datka: Queen of the Mountains celebrates the life and deeds of a remarkable Kyrgyz woman who managed to unite fractured Kyrgyz tribes during the tumultuous final years of the Kokand Khanate and Tsarist Russia’s colonial conquest. Hailing from a humble nomadic background, the historical Kurmanjan (1811–1906), daughter of Mamatbai of the Mogush tribe from the scenic Alai Mountains in the Kyrgyz south, defied her patriarchal culture’s expectations when she left her “lawful” husband and married the man she loved, a prominent Kyrgyz khan cum powerful Kokand official, Alymbek Datka. After Alymbek’s death in a Kokand court intrigue in 1862, the Emir of Bukhara, recognizing Kurmanjan’s influence among her people, awarded her the title of Datka, or General. Four actresses portray Kurmanjan at different stages in her nearly century-long life, most notably the graceful and quietly confident Elina Abai-kyzy as a young adult and the dignified and subtly expressive Nasira Mambetova in old age.

 

The film conscientiously traces the arc from the heroine’s humble origins and her initial role as a devoted wife and mother actively involved in the everyday life of her community, to her eventual success as a national leader who learns to subordinate her private interests to the well-being of her people. Kurmanjan’s personal bridging of social, economic, and gender divides emerges as an essential prerequisite to her ability to negotiate between her people’s private aspirations and national needs, between the interests of Northern and Southern Kyrgyz tribes, and between what the film portrays as the Kyrgyz nascent sense of nationhood and Tsarist Russia’s colonial expansion. The film culminates in a General Assembly attended by representatives from all Kyrgyz tribes that connects Kurmanjan’s nation-building efforts with the country’s eventual attainment of sovereignty in 1991, for the first time since the fall of Kyrgyz Kaganate in the thirteenth century. In highlighting the Mother of the Kyrgyz nation’s humility, social conscience, and openness to fair negotiations, the film proffers a model for contemporary Kyrgyz leaders tackling similar if not identical problems in a globalized post-colonial setting. At the same time, this state-bankrolled patriotic story of a Kyrgyz national and cultural renaissance in confrontation with powerful neighboring states calls into question the status of non-Kyrgyz ethnicities, most relevantly Uzbek and Russian, that call contemporary multi-ethnic Kyrgyzstan their home...

 

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Kurmanjan Datka: Queen of the Mountains

 

Third fragment from review written by Gulbara Tolomushova "An Ideal World Order":

 

     "...At the centre of Mirlan Abdykalykov’s debut film stands the family of the herdsman Akylbek, which prefers to climb into celestial valleys and over the course of the year wanders within the boundaries of a particular location. All adult members of the family work without rest: the care for the herd requires constant attention—frequent milking of the mares, playing with the foals, tending to the horses on the pasture, riding and racing them. Akylbek’s wife Karachach has a personal point of view on everything, which is not conterminous with the opinion of the other family members. Therefore she often tells her husband that ostensibly the daughter-in-law Shaiyr is not as kind to her as required by family etiquette. Akylbek silently listens, but does not react in any way. Once Karachach has spoken, she goes after her business. No tiresome admonitions, disputes, conflicts.

 

On the other hand, Shaiyr conducts herself impeccably and gracefully; the mother-in-law cannot really complain about her aloud, she can only cast a slanting look after her; and she is only too jealous when she sees the daughter-in-law easily mount a horse and ride off to the jailoo. Shaiyr is the ideal image of a Kyrgyz woman: she is beautiful, she is a good mother, an excellent mistress of the house and a hard worker. Shaiyr treats the father-in-law respectfully; she remains loyal to her dead husband; she adequately, without causing offense, rejects the proposal of the visiting meteorologist Ermek to have a family..."

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Heavenly Nomadic

 

Fourth fragment from review written by Gulbara Tolomushova "When Fathers Depart for Heaven":

 

     "...The young people are, first, two brothers. The extravagant, unrestrained Kerim, nicknamed Wolfy; and the kind, industrious, reliable Aman, whom people unfairly call “Gaspy;” and also their girlfriend, the orphan Saltanat. The brothers illegally obtain boulders of sparkled granite, which is considered a semi-precious stone. During the Soviet times, the quarry in Kyzyl-Ompol, to the west of Issyk-Kul, was known in the neighboring republics, but nowadays, because of cracks in the rock, the stone is no longer extracted on an industrial level.

Saltanat has grown up with Tayene, her grandmother on the mother’s side, since her parents perished in a road accident. The girl remained alive through a miracle, but a light, hardly noticeable limp reminds us of the terrible accident. Tayene rejoices in her granddaughter: “You have grown to be an obedient, modest girl. Your parents would be happy to see you like this.”

 

The other two heroines are the brothers’ mother and their aunt Ooma. They personify two opposite female essences: the mother is tender, caring, compassionate, and strong both in spirit and physically. On her shoulders rests the brothers’ household from their father’s side, since the father Adamkul has left for Russia to earn money so he can pay off Kerim’s debts. Somehow the father managed to get the elder son out of a prison sentence for drug trafficking.

 

The shallow Ooma is the centre of idle talk; she does not have any concise reference points in her life; they say about such people that they are as daft as a brush..."

 

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