The Saga of Chengiz Aytmatov
When Chengiz Aytmatov went onstage in the spacious Palace of the
Republic in Almaty at the closing gala of the Fourth Eurasia
International Film Festival (23 29 September 2007) to receive an
honorary award from the Kazakh government, he was greeted with a
standing ovation. Indeed, the applause was well deserved. For the
78-year-old Kyrgys writer-diplomat is revered throughout Central Asia
not only as a gifted storyteller, whose heart-rending novella Jamila
(published in 1958) was praised by Louis Aragon as "the world's most
beautiful love story," but also as the first Kyrgys Ambassador to
Luxembourg and the European Union in Brussels. Moreover, during the
high-water mark of the Khrushchev "thaw" (1956-65), when Chengiz
Aytmatov was appointed head of the Kyrgyzfilm Studio in Frunze (today
Biskek), he fostered there a pathbreaking "director's cinema" that
helped to revolutionize Soviet cinematography altogether. How Chengiz
Aytmatov accomplished this rather extraordinary feat still boggles the
imagination today. For the newly appointed studio head, however, it
simply meant sustaining a fading nomadic culture while fostering a
native film tradition.

Upon receiving the 1963 Lenin Prize for Literature for his Tales of
the Mountains and the Steppes, and backed by a film studio
ready-and-willing to do his bidding, Chengiz Aytmatov had invited a
talented 22-year-old student from the Moscow Film School (VGIK) to
direct the studio's first film production. Larisa Shepitko had sent
him a script based on his own Camel's Ear story in the Tales of the
Mountains and the Steppes collection. Her Heat (1963), upon
completion, seemed assured of instant success with the Central Asian
public, although hardly with the Soviet censors in Moscow. But as the
film's responsible producer, Aytmatov had another card up his sleeve.
Recognizing that Heat had challenged the then sacrosanct principles of
socialist realism, he arranged for the film to be shown first at the
1963 Festival of Central Asian Films in Dushambe, the capital of
neighboring Tajikistan. There, as it turned out, a release certificate
was fortunately granted and the film cleared for exhibition throughout
the Soviet Union. Recognition in Dushambe, in turn, encouraged
Kirghizfilm to enter Heat in 1964 at the First All-Union Soviet Film
Festival in Leningrad, where it was awarded the Prize for Best
Direction. That same year, Heat was invited to the Karlovy Vary
International Film Festival, where both the film and Kyrgys cinema
were hailed as a phenomenon on the world film stage.

Following the success of Larisa Shepitko's Heat at the Leningrad
All-Union festival, Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky, her colleague at
the Moscow Film School, also journeyed to Kyrgystan to direct his
first feature film. And, of course, Konchalovsky's The First Teacher
(1964) was based on another Chengiz Aytmatov story, published under
the same title in 1962. When the film finally received Soviet
permission to be screened at the 1966 Venice International Film
Festival, Natalya Arinbasarova in the role of the "first teacher" was
awarded the Volpi Prize for Best Actress. It was the second major
Soviet film success at Venice, following a share of the Golden Lion
awarded to Andrei Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood in 1962. Thus, although
the Khrushchev "thaw" was finished, a core of "Young Soviet Directors"
were to become a catchword at international film festivals – thanks to
the foresight of writer-producer Chengiz Aytmatov.

"Kazakh New Wave" Remembered

Eurasia Almaty 2007 closed on another high note at the Palace of the
Republic, this time prompted by a VIP address by Adilbek Zhaksybekov
(sometimes spelled Dzhaksybekov), Head of the Presidential
Administration under Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev. From now
on, Zhaksybekov announced, the Eurasia Film Festival would be held
annually, instead of biannually since its founding in 1998. And he
added: "We believe in a great future for the Eurasia film festival and
wish our Kazakh cinematography to develop as rapidly as our political
and economical stability." One has to take the Presidential
Administrator at his word, for among the political hats worn by
Adilbek Zhaksybekov over the past few years are: Mayor of Astana
(2002), Board Chairman of the Islamic Development Bank (2003),
Minister of Industry and Trade (2004), Chairman of Information and
Communications Agency (2004), and (in August of 2007) President of the
Soccer Federation of Kazakhstan. Most important of all for the
struggling Kazakh film industry, Zhaksybekov (born in 1954) had
studied film economics at the All-Union State Cinematography School
(VGIK) in Moscow and began his career in the 1980s in the State
Cinematography Office of the Soviet Kazakh Republic in Almaty
(formerly Alma-Ata).

It was during this time that the "Kazakh New Wave" had burst like a
comet upon the international festival scene. In 1984, while Sergei
Solovyov, a Moscow based Russian director, was shooting The Wild
Pigeon in Kazakhstan, he invited young Kazakhs from his film crew to
attend his Master Class at the Moscow Film School (VGIK). Among these
youngsters was Rashid Nugmanov, whose first feature film, The Needle
(1988), was seen by an estimated 25 million across the Soviet Union –
an incredible box office hit by any standard. Independently produced
at the Kazakhfilm Studio, this avant-garde, action-gangster,
rock-and-drugs feature starred underground pop-star Victor Tsoi with
music on the soundtrack played by his band. Shortly thereafter, at the
1989 Moscow film festival, other films by Kazakh directors were
screened, and the "Kazakh New Wave" was coined by visiting critics,
and invitations from abroad immediately followed. In 1990, Rashid
Nugmanov, the newly elected First Secretary of the Union of Kazakh
Filmmakers, attended the Sundance festival. Shortly thereafter, just
as Kazakhstan was declaring its national independence in 1991, a
Kazakh film retrospective was programmed at the Centre Pompidou in
Paris.

Unfortunately, the "Kazakh New Wave" lasted a short ten years, from
1984 to 1994. During this time, however, international audiences
became well acquainted with the diverse talents of the directors in
the movement. Darezhan Omirbaev, critic-editor for the Almaty-based
New Film journal, was recognized as a genuine auteur after the
international success of his minimalist short, July (1988). His first
feature film, Kairat (1991), the story of a young man from a village
who faces loneliness and despair in Almaty, was awarded the Silver
Leopard at the 1992 Locarno festival. Abai Karpikov also portrayed the
pessimism of Kazakh youth in Little Fish in Love (1989). Serik Aprimov
took the pulse of the decaying Soviet empire in The Last Stop (1989).
Amir Karakulov's A Woman Between Two Brothers (1991) won critical
praise as a sophisticated psycho-drama. And Ardak Amirkulov's The Fall
of Atrar (1991) broke new ground as the first genuine Kazakh
historical epic. National independence, however, brought with it
increasing government interference at the Kazakhfilm Studio. Rashid
Nugmanov just managed to finish The Wild East (1993) before emigrating
to France. A year later, in the summer of 1994, only one film was in
production at Kazakhfilm, while three projects at the studio had been
halted midway through production. Still, the mystique of the "Kazakh
New Wave" has lived on in the work of directors who found coproduction
support abroad in France and other western European countries.

Highlights at 2007 Eurasia Almaty

Almaty is a boom town. Buoyed by extensive oil and gas reserves and
stabilized by agricultural products and grain exports, the Almaty
well-to-do are anything but reluctant to celebrate the good life.
During the week-long Eurasia festival a trio of massive festive
banquets were held to honor VIP guests and government officials flown
in from the Astana capital. The French delegation was particularly
prominent, led by Gerard Depardieu and Sophie Marceau. Film directors,
producers, and actors from neighboring Central Asian countries were
also highly visible. Screenings were held in the multiplex at the
mammoth Silk Way City mall, the Caesar theatre chain scattered across
the city, the Palace of the Republic, and Dom Kino (the House of
Cinema headquarters of Kazakh directors). The 150 page catalogue in
three languages (Kazakh, Russian, English) also spotlighted the
support given by over 50 sponsors, the most prominent of which was the
festival's General Sponsor, the "Atameken Holding" Joint Stock
Company.

Artistic Director Gulnara Abikeyeva assembled a solid program of 15
entries for the International Competition of Asian and European Films,
with purses for winners totaling around $50,000. Another 12 entries
competed for laurels in the Competition of Central Asian and Turkic
Films. Directorial retrospectives honored Taiwan's Tsai Ming-Lang,
Greece's Theo Angelopoulos, Kazakhstan's Mazhit Begalin, and Kazakh
Animation (celebrating its 40th anniversary). These, in addition to an
Out-of-Competition sidebar featuring highlights from recent
international film festivals. Of particular importance to visiting
critics was a well attended roundtable on the current status of
Central Asian cinema conducted by Gulnara Abikeyeva. Here, productions
in neighboring Central Asian countries were discussed at some length,
with European visitors taking notice of new Central Asian film
festivals that bode well for the future. Critic Gulbara Tolomushova
heads the progressive Biskek film festival in Kyrgystan, a short
four-hour driving distance from Almaty. And filmmaker Safar Hadkodov
programs the equally vital Dushambe film festival in Tajikistan.

Kazakh entries were standouts at this year's Eurasia film festival.
In the International Competition the Special Jury Prize was awarded to
Darezhan Omirbaev's Shuga, a free-flowing adaptation of motifs in
Tolstoy's Anna Karenina to a contemporary Kazakh milieu. Often cited
as the "Robert Bresson of Central Asian Cinema," Darezhan Omirbaev's
minimalist style has guaranteed him continual French coproduction
support over the years. Ainur Turganbaeva gives a remarkable
performance as the tragic heroine Shuga, a married woman from Astana
who falls fatally for a young suitor while trying to reconcile her
brother's marriage problems in Almaty. The Grand Prize in the Central
Asian and Turkic Competition was awarded to Abai Kulbai's Strizh
(Swift), a portrait of a young girl who struggles with forces beyond
her control – a drunken stepfather, a pregnant mother, drugs and
violence at school – to find her place in an ice-cold, impersonal, and
uncaring Almaty. When Abai Kulbai accepted his prize in the Palace of
the Republic, he requested that his mentor in a director's workshop at
the Almaty Academy of Arts join him onstage for the honor – Ardak
Amirkulov, one of the key figures in the "Kazakh New Wave" of
yesteryear.

Bahman Ghobadi's Niwemung (Half Moon) was deservedly awarded the
Grand Prize for Best Film in the International Competition. Given the
portfolio of the festival, Half Moon is "Eurasian" to the core – an
Iranian-French-Austrian-Iraqi roadmovie coproduction. When Mamo, an
old and venerated Kurdish musician living in Iran, announces to his
ten sons that he wants to give one final concert in his native
Kurdistan quarter of Iraq, they immediately join the stubborn old man
on his journey in a dilapidated bus – even though they suspect that
his visa papers are hardly in order. Along the way, the musicians stop
to pick up a female singer in an isolated village, a decision that can
only lead to more trouble – for Iranian women are not allowed to sing
in public before an audience with men. Add the these dilemmas a
premonition of death (the half-moon in the old man's dreams), and you
have a spellbinding Iranian-Iraqi border movie you will not easily
forget.

Eurasia Almaty Awards

International Competition
Grand Prix – Best Film
Niwemung (Half Moon) (Iran/France/Austria/Iraq), dir Bahman Ghobadi
Best Director
Alexei Popogrebsky, Prostyje veshchi (Simple Things) (Russia)
Special Jury Prize – ex aequo
Shuga (Kazakhstan), dir Darezhan Omirbaev
Foster Child (Philippines), dir Brillante Mendoza
Best Actor
Leonid Bronevoy, Prostyje veshchi (Simple Things) (Russia), dir Alexei
Popogrebsky
Best Actress
Fan Bing Bing (Bingbing Fan), Ping guo (Lost in Beijing) (China), dir
Yu Li (Li Yu)

Central Asian and Turkic Competition
Grand Prix – Best Film – ex aequo
Strizh (Swift) (Kazakhstan), dir Abai Kulbai
Boz salkyn (Light Cool) (Kyrgyzstan/Kazakhstan), dir Ernest Abdyzhaparov
Best Director
Fatih Haciosmanoglu, Beton yastik (Concrete Pillow) (Turkey)
Special Jury Prize
Not awarded
Best Actress
Dinara Kashaganova, Kine (Sin) (Kazakhstan), dir Bolat Sharip

Atameken Holding Award – International Competition
California Dreamin' (Romania), dir Cristian Nemescu
Netpac Award – Central Asian and Turkic Competition
Strizh (Swift) (Kazakhstan), dir Abai Kulbai
Investment in Asian Cinema Promotion Prize
Nurmahan Zhanturin, actor (posthumously).
Investment in World Cinema Prize
Jacqueline Bisset, actress

Heat at the Leningrad All-Union festival, Andrei
Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky, her colleague at the Moscow Film School, also
journeyed to Kyrgystan to direct his first feature film. And, of
course, Konchalovskyhe First Teacher (1964) was based on another
Chengiz Aytmatov story, published under the same title in 1962. When
the film finally received Soviet permission to be screened at the 1966
Venice International Film Festival, Natalya Arinbasarova in the role
of the st teachers awarded the Volpi Prize for Best Actress.
It was the second major Soviet film success at Venice, following a
share of the Golden Lion awarded to Andrei Tarkovskyvanhildhood in 1962.
Thus, although the Khrushchev ws finished,
a core of ng Soviet Directorsre to become a catchword at
international film festivals anks to the foresight of
writer-producer Chengiz Aytmatov.

akh New Wavemembered

Eurasia Almaty 2007 closed on another high note at the Palace of the
Republic, this time prompted by a VIP address by Adilbek Zhaksybekov
(sometimes spelled Dzhaksybekov), Head of the Presidential
Administration under Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev. From now
on, Zhaksybekov announced, the Eurasia Film Festival would be held
annually, instead of biannually since its founding in 1998. And he
added: believe in a great future for the Eurasia film festival and
wish our Kazakh cinematography to develop as rapidly as our political
and economical stability.e has to take the Presidential
Administrator at his word, for among the political hats worn by
Adilbek Zhaksybekov over the past few years are: Mayor of Astana
(2002), Board Chairman of the Islamic Development Bank (2003),
Minister of Industry and Trade (2004), Chairman of Information and
Communications Agency (2004), and (in August of 2007) President of the
Soccer Federation of Kazakhstan. Most important of all for the
struggling Kazakh film industry, Zhaksybekov (born in 1954) had
studied film economics at the All-Union State Cinematography School
(VGIK) in Moscow and began his career in the 1980s in the State
Cinematography Office of the Soviet Kazakh Republic in Almaty
(formerly Alma-Ata).

It was during this time that the akh New Waved burst like a
comet upon the international festival scene. In 1984, while Sergei
Solovyov, a Moscow based Russian director, was shooting The Wild
Pigeon in Kazakhstan, he invited young Kazakhs from his film crew to
attend his Master Class at the Moscow Film School (VGIK). Among these
youngsters was Rashid Nugmanov, whose first feature film, The Needle
(1988), was seen by an estimated 25 million across the Soviet Union
incredible box office hit by any standard. Independently produced
at the Kazakhfilm Studio, this avant-garde, action-gangster,
rock-and-drugs feature starred underground pop-star Victor Tsoi with
music on the soundtrack played by his band. Shortly thereafter, at the
1989 Moscow film festival, other films by Kazakh directors were
screened, and the akh New Waves coined by visiting critics,
and invitations from abroad immediately followed. In 1990, Rashid
Nugmanov, the newly elected First Secretary of the Union of Kazakh
Filmmakers, attended the Sundance festival. Shortly thereafter, just
as Kazakhstan was declaring its national independence in 1991, a
Kazakh film retrospective was programmed at the Centre Pompidou in
Paris.

Unfortunately, the akh New Wavested a short ten years, from
1984 to 1994. During this time, however, international audiences
became well acquainted with the diverse talents of the directors in
the movement. Darezhan Omirbaev, critic-editor for the Almaty-based
New Film journal, was recognized as a genuine auteur after the
international success of his minimalist short, July (1988). His first
feature film, Kairat (1991), the story of a young man from a village
who faces loneliness and despair in Almaty, was awarded the Silver
Leopard at the 1992 Locarno festival. Abai Karpikov also portrayed the
pessimism of Kazakh youth in Little Fish in Love (1989). Serik Aprimov
took the pulse of the decaying Soviet empire in The Last Stop (1989).
Amir Karakulov Woman Between Two Brothers (1991) won critical
praise as a sophisticated psycho-drama. And Ardak Amirkulovhe Fall
of Atrar (1991) broke new ground as the first genuine Kazakh
historical epic. National independence, however, brought with it
increasing government interference at the Kazakhfilm Studio. Rashid
Nugmanov just managed to finish The Wild East (1993) before emigrating
to France. A year later, in the summer of 1994, only one film was in
production at Kazakhfilm, while three projects at the studio had been
halted midway through production. Still, the mystique of the akh
New Waves lived on in the work of directors who found coproduction
support abroad in France and other western European countries.

Highlights at 2007 Eurasia Almaty

Almaty is a boom town. Buoyed by extensive oil and gas reserves and
stabilized by agricultural products and grain exports, the Almaty
well-to-do are anything but reluctant to celebrate the good life.
During the week-long Eurasia festival a trio of massive festive
banquets were held to honor VIP guests and government officials flown
in from the Astana capital. The French delegation was particularly
prominent, led by Gerard Depardieu and Sophie Marceau. Film directors,
producers, and actors from neighboring Central Asian countries were
also highly visible. Screenings were held in the multiplex at the
mammoth Silk Way City mall, the Caesar theatre chain scattered across
the city, the Palace of the Republic, and Dom Kino (the House of
Cinema headquarters of Kazakh directors). The 150 page catalogue in
three languages (Kazakh, Russian, English) also spotlighted the
support given by over 50 sponsors, the most prominent of which was the
festivaleneral Sponsor, the meken Holdingint Stock
Company.

Artistic Director Gulnara Abikeyeva assembled a solid program of 15
entries for the International Competition of Asian and European Films,
with purses for winners totaling around $50,000. Another 12 entries
competed for laurels in the Competition of Central Asian and Turkic
Films. Directorial retrospectives honored Taiwansai Ming-Lang,
Greeceheo Angelopoulos, Kazakhstanazhit Begalin, and Kazakh
Animation (celebrating its 40th anniversary). These, in addition to an
Out-of-Competition sidebar featuring highlights from recent
international film festivals. Of particular importance to visiting
critics was a well attended roundtable on the current status of
Central Asian cinema conducted by Gulnara Abikeyeva. Here, productions
in neighboring Central Asian countries were discussed at some length,
with European visitors taking notice of new Central Asian film
festivals that bode well for the future. Critic Gulbara Tolomushova
heads the progressive Biskek film festival in Kyrgystan, a short
four-hour driving distance from Almaty. And filmmaker Safar Hadkodov
programs the equally vital Dushambe film festival in Tajikistan.

Kazakh entries were standouts at this yearurasia film festival.
In the International Competition the Special Jury Prize was awarded to
Darezhan Omirbaevhuga, a free-flowing adaptation of motifs in
Tolstoynna Karenina to a contemporary Kazakh milieu. Often cited
as the ert Bresson of Central Asian Cinema,rezhan Omirbaevinimalist
style has guaranteed him continual French coproduction
support over the years. Ainur Turganbaeva gives a remarkable
performance as the tragic heroine Shuga, a married woman from Astana
who falls fatally for a young suitor while trying to reconcile her
brotherarriage problems in Almaty. The Grand Prize in the Central
Asian and Turkic Competition was awarded to Abai Kulbaitrizh
(Swift), a portrait of a young girl who struggles with forces beyond
her control drunken stepfather, a pregnant mother, drugs and
violence at school find her place in an ice-cold, impersonal, and
uncaring Almaty. When Abai Kulbai accepted his prize in the Palace of
the Republic, he requested that his mentor in a directororkshop at
the Almaty Academy of Arts join him onstage for the honor dak
Amirkulov, one of the key figures in the akh New Wave
yesteryear.

Bahman Ghobadiiwemung (Half Moon) was deservedly awarded the
Grand Prize for Best Film in the International Competition. Given the
portfolio of the festival, Half Moon is asian the core
Iranian-French-Austrian-Iraqi roadmovie coproduction. When Mamo, an
old and venerated Kurdish musician living in Iran, announces to his
ten sons that he wants to give one final concert in his native
Kurdistan quarter of Iraq, they immediately join the stubborn old man
on his journey in a dilapidated bus en though they suspect that
his visa papers are hardly in order. Along the way, the musicians stop
to pick up a female singer in an isolated village, a decision that can
only lead to more trouble r Iranian women are not allowed to sing
in public before an audience with men. Add the these dilemmas a
premonition of death (the half-moon in the old manreams), and you
have a spellbinding Iranian-Iraqi border movie you will not easily
forget.

Eurasia Almaty Awards

International Competition
Grand Prix st Film
Niwemung (Half Moon) (Iran/France/Austria/Iraq), dir Bahman Ghobadi
Best Director
Alexei Popogrebsky, Prostyje veshchi (Simple Things) (Russia)
Special Jury Prize aequo
Shuga (Kazakhstan), dir Darezhan Omirbaev
Foster Child (Philippines), dir Brillante Mendoza
Best Actor
Leonid Bronevoy, Prostyje veshchi (Simple Things) (Russia), dir Alexei
Popogrebsky
Best Actress
Fan Bing Bing (Bingbing Fan), Ping guo (Lost in Beijing) (China), dir
Yu Li (Li Yu)

Central Asian and Turkic Competition
Grand Prix st Film aequo
Strizh (Swift) (Kazakhstan), dir Abai Kulbai
Boz salkyn (Light Cool) (Kyrgyzstan/Kazakhstan), dir Ernest Abdyzhaparov
Best Director
Fatih Haciosmanoglu, Beton yastConcrete Pillow) (Turkey)
Special Jury Prize
Not awarded
Best Actress
Dinara Kashaganova, Kine (Sin) (Kazakhstan), dir Bolat Sharip

Atameken Holding Award ternational Competition
California Dreaminomania), dir Cristian Nemescu
Netpac Award ntral Asian and Turkic Competition
Strizh (Swift) (Kazakhstan), dir Abai Kulbai
Investment in Asian Cinema Promotion Prize
Nurmahan Zhanturin, actor (posthumously).
Investment in World Cinema Prize
Jacqueline Bisset, actress