Red Westerns Retrospective in Rio de Janeiro

Red Westerns Retrospective will be presented in Brazil entitled O Faroeste Vermelho on July 7th - July 17th in Caixa Cultural Rio.

The event is counting with the support and advice of Ludmila Cvikova and Melissa van der Schoor, from the Rotterdam Film Festival, Sergey Lavrentiev, historian and film critic, and Ali Khamraev, director of some of these movies.

"Red Poppies of Issyk-Kul"

It is planned to happen on July 7th - July 17th in Caixa Cultural Rio, an important cultural centre in our city, during an important, pre-olympic games moment here in Rio de Janeiro.

"The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks"

From the 1920s to the 1980s, a communist version of the Western genre was extremely popular in the countries of the former Eastern Bloc. IFFR 2011 will be screening the first ever sizeable overview of these almost forgotten genre productions, which have seldom been seen at in ‘the West’.

The striking Red Westerns series will show just how successfully a pre-eminently Western film genre was tailored to the communist ideology by introducing, for example, unexpected heroic characters. The programme therefore gives insights into the way popular blockbusters were made in an era of socialistic realism.

"The Elusive Avengers"

Red Westerns, compiled by IFFR programmer Ludmila Cvikova and Russian film critic Sergei Lavrentyev, will also screen in 2011 at the Gothenburg IFF (Sweden), Crossing Europe in Linz (Austria), Era New Horizons in Wroclaw (Poland) and IFF Bratislava (Slovakia). A special publication will accompany the programme. For the occasion, Mosfilm Studio’s in Moscow made new, English subtitled prints from five of the films in the Red Westerns programme.

"Chingachgook, the Great Snake"

The starting point for the Red Westerns programme is the silent film Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in a Bolshevik Land (1924) by Russian film pioneer and theoretician Lev Kuleshov. The programme, which will be made up of approximately fifteen films, also contains Niekas Nenorejo Mirti (No One Wanted to Die, 1966, directed by Vytautas Zalakevicius) – a Western filmed in Lithuania that was voted Best Film by the readers of ‘Soviet Screen’ in 1966 – and two East German DEFA productions: Die Söhne des Großen Bärin (The Sons of Great Mother Bear, 1965, directed by Josef Mach) and Chingachgook, Die Große Schlange (Chingachgook, The Great Snake, 1967, directed by Richard Groschopp). In the latter two films, the Mongolian, Bulgarian, Yugoslav, Czechoslovakian landscapes stand for the Wild West and Gojko Mitic – originally a Serbian sports instructor – stars in the lead roles. 

"The Seventh bullet"

Among the films of the program Red Westerns:

- "The Red Poppies of Issyk-Kul" (by Bolot Shamshiev, USSR/Kyrgyzstan, 1971, starring: Suymenkul Chokmorov)

 - "The Seventh bullet" (by Ali Khamraev, USSR/Uzbekistan, 1972, starring: Suymenkul Chokmorov)

 - "White Sun of the Desert" (by Vladimir Motyl, USSR/Russia, 1970)

 - "No One Wanted To Die" (by Vitautas Zalakyavichus, USSR/Lithuania, 1965)

 - "Chingachgook, the Great Snake" (by Richard Groschopp, DDR, 1967)

 - "The Sons of Great Bear" (by Jozef Mach, DDR, 1966)

 - "The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks" (by Lev Kuleshov, USSR/Russia, 1924)

 - "By The Law" (by Lev Kuleshov, USSR, 1926)

 - "The Thirteen" (by Mikhail Romm, USSR, 1936)

 - "At Home among Strangers, A Stranger at home" (by Nikita Mikhalkov, USSR/Russia, 1974)

 - "Lemonade Joe" (Oldrich Lipsky, Czechoslovakia, 1964)

 - "Meeting at the Old Mosque" (by Sukhbat Khamidov, USSR/Tadjikistan, 1970)

 - "The Actress, The Dollars and The Transylvanians" (by Mirce Veroiu, Romania, 1979) 

 - "The Eighth" (by Zako Heskiya, Bulgaria, 1969)

 - "The Elusive Avengers" (by Edmond Keosayan, USSR/Russia, 1967)

 - "The Law and The Fist" (by Edward Skorzewski, Jerzy Hoffman, Poland, 1964)

"The Red Poppies of Issyk-Kul"

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Gulbara Tolomushova about Red Poppies of Issyk-Kul:

Based on the novella The Smugglers of the Tian Shan, this popular Kyrgyz film takes place in the 1920s and uses the basic formula of the Red Western: a Bolshevik superman fights a violent native gang of opium traffickers.

Somewhere in Kyrgyzstan in the 1920s, the pro-Soviet guard Karabalta (‘Black Axe’) detects secret paths in the mountains used by smugglers to transport opium across the Soviet border.

Meanwhile, a strange man named ‘Golden Mouth’ offers to accompany a patrol unit led by the Russian commander Kondraty, promising to help find these smugglers and their camp. A mission to find the opium cache is complicated by kidnappers and other disasters.

Bolotbek Shamshiev’s thriller has a plot that follows the basic formula of the Red Western: a larger-than-life Bolshevik Superman fights a violent native gang operating under the leadership of a cunning and ruthless criminal patriarch. In The Red Poppies of Issyk-Kul, an ascetic, quiet Superman - as usual - embodies the film’s positive moral core. The film is distinguished by superb camera work, praising the beauty of Kyrgyzstan’s wild nature in lavish widescreen images.

"Red Poppies of Issyk-Kul"

Info about film Red Poppies of Isyk-Kul:

Director: Bolot Shamshiev

USSR - 1972

Length: 99 min

Screen play: Yuryi Sokol, Vasilyi Sokol (adaptation of a short novel by Aleksandr Sytin)

With: Suimenkul Chokmolov, Sovetbek Dzhumadylov, Eleubai Umurzakov

Camera: Viktor Osennikov

Production design: Aleksei Makarov

Music: Mikhael Marutaev

35mm

Bolot Shamshiev:

Bobotlek SHAMSHIEV (1941, Kirgizia) graduated in 1965 from the Moscow film school with the popular-scientific documentary Manaschy (1965). This film was given an award at the International Short Film Festival of Oberhausen. His later prizes also won prizes. In 1991, he was given the honourary title People’s Artist of the USSR.

FILMOGRAPHY

(selection) A shot at the Karash Pass (1968), Alye maki Issyk-Kulya/The Red Poppies of Issyl-Kyl (1972), The Echo of Love (1974), White Boat (1976), Early Cranes (1979)

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