Film and Video

If you are too excited to wait for Queer Takes to open tomorrow night with a screening of Nacho Velilla’s Chef’s Special, you’re in luck. Here are the details:

In celebration of Gay Pride, the Minneapolis Jewish Film Festival and St. Paul Jewish Community Center present the Minnesota premiere showing of an Israeli GLBT documentary, Stefan Braun. Fabulous archival footage of Tel Aviv’s gay life from the 1950s immerses us in the world of society furrier Stefan Braun and the man who loved, worshipped and stood by him for 39 years, Eliezer Rath. Braun’s charisma and zest fascinated not only Israel’s wealthy matrons, chic models, and his many lovers, but also his extended family for whom he was a patriarch and benefactor.

The short film, A Trip to Prague, will also play at this event in case you missed is this March at the festival. Click here for a synopsis.

Discussion on Project 515 and marriage equality following films!

Minneapolis Jewish Film Festival and St. Paul JCC Present Stefan Braun Monday, June 22, 7 pm St. Paul JCC (1375 St. Paul Avenue), $6 St. Paul and Sabes JCC members/$9 public

Recently, seemingly obscure and/or random movies have been infiltrating my life. You see, I have no real problem with this, however, after having a film pop-up over three times within a period of one week, it begins to feel not-so-coincidental and instead just weird.

Two weeks ago, I embarked on a cross-country trip to California via a ‘99 red Chevy Cavalier. On day one, my copilot mentioned that she put Pee Wee’s Big Adventure on her laptop to watch. I laughed, found the movie fitting for our excursion, and recalled a random moment in history—when I was a freshman in college; a friend wrote a bogus grant that allowed access to the HUGE soccer dome on campus. There we projected Pee Wee’s Big Adventure on the inside of the dome and encouraged students to bring sleeping bags and lay on the Astroturf to watch the movie.

On day five of our trip (the first four were scenic-scapes of driving), we arrive in California. We take the BART to San Francisco and walk up one million hills. On the descent of the last hill, we land upon an old repertory theatre, whose marquee reads, “Tonight’s Movie: Pee Wee’s Big Adventure.”

Day six, I walk into a kitsch/vintage store and a wind-up Pee Wee doll hangs in the window.

Day Seven, the last day in California. Somewhere in Chinatown, a dusty bobble-head-sized Pee Wee guards the cash register in a tourist market.

I get home and forget about Pee Wee’s strange inclusion in our journey; how this movie and others have found a way of infusing themselves into my life. When I thought all was safe, Pee Wee turned up again, almost an entire week after arriving home. Upon making an alteration appointment for a bridesmaids dress, I asked the man at the shop where exactly they were located. He gave me the precise location, and added that there is a different tailor next door and to make sure I go to the one with Pee Wee Herman in the window.

Now it had surpassed coincidence and chance.

What this made me realize is that the movies, as much as we may deny, are inescapable. Past and present films hold a prominent place in the collective conscious and unconscious, and have a tendancy to reveal themselves when the relevant time indicates. It seems that not a single day is able to go by without some mere mention or film reference. What will be next? Cool Hand Luke or reoccurring images of Paul Newman?

So my curiosity lingers, and wonders what the new film/image will be and how it will work itself into my life.

William Klein's MR. FREEDOM

The multifaceted artist William Klein is everything but a conformist. He is in fact its antithesis, making the most of each opportunity he has to question all conventions, be it in the world of photography or film. He craves the eccentric and out of the ordinary, he explores behind the scenes and brings to light the absurd, the forgotten and the rejected. He seeks not to please but rather to provoke; with wit and humor he reveals what others choose to ignore.

Just after World War II, Klein, the 18-year-old Jewish New Yorker was sent to Germany to do his military service. Two years later he went to Paris, where he met the love of his life and future collaborator, Jeanne Florin. He studied painting with Fernand Léger, but soon began his photographic career shooting fashion photos for Vogue (New York) magazine and then moving to street photography. His first book, New York (Life Is Good & Good for You in New York: Trance Witness Revels) changed the course of photography. His innovative choice of subject matter and use of wide-angle lenses, out-of-focus elements, and grainy film were criticized at the time but soon earned him international recognition.

In 1958, encouraged by his friends Chris Marker and Alain Resnais, Klein began his filmmaking adventure with the short Broadway by Light. With Times Square as the stage and the neon signs as ready-mades, Klein created an exquisite collage of words, lights, and abstract images that was considered to be the first Pop movie.

With the swinging sixties came Klein’s first feature film, the luscious Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo? (1966), a satire on the extravagance and superficiality of the media and the fashion world. With a truly unique style, Klein cunningly cuts from one genre to another, from fiction to false documentary, passing through animation, musical comedy, and even a bit of cinéma verité.

As Klein approached his forties, the war in Vietnam was at its peak and he became overtly political. In 1967 he joined with Alain Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard, Agnès Varda, Claude Lelouch, Joris Ivens, and Chris Marker to make the film Loin du Vietnam, a direct attack on U.S. foreign policy.

Long before comic book characters became a trend in film, Klein created Mr. Freedom (1968), which features a superhero who incarnates the United States’ God-like attitude toward the world. This hilarious farce offers an unmerciful critique of the American government as well as other political doctrines such as Maoism and Stalinism. Initially banned in France, it presents a harmonious and yet disturbing explosion of color, violence, and humor.

During the late 1960s, Klein continued to reveal the cracks in the American dream and focused on the general world disillusionment of that era through such films as Grand soirs et petits matins (1968-1978), Festival Panafricain d’Alger (1969), and Eldridge Cleaver, Black Panther (1970). In the latter, Klein portrayed the revolutionary and polemic Eldridge Cleaver who, wanted in the United States, had fled to Algeria in exile. Here we see two of Klein’s traits as a filmmaker: his talent for getting close to his subjects, and his ability to go where others have not. Klein has a special interest in turning his camera toward the outcasts of his time and adopting this challenging and provocative position from which to see the world.

In 1974 Klein completed the magnificent Muhammad Ali the Greatest (1964-74), his most renowned documentary. Intended to demonstrate “the polarization of good and evil in America around a heavyweight championship fight,” the film is much more than just a portrait of the controversial Ali; it also includes a valuable interview with Malcolm X only 10 days before he was assassinated. Unconventional in its narrative with masterful editing — quick and dynamic — the camera smooth and yet alert floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee.

Klein’s third narrative feature uses a stylistic approach influenced by Mondrian, with a minimalist setting, to tell its tale of Le Couple Témoin (1976), a movie ahead of its time about a model couple involved in a “Big Brother” government experiment. As we witness the ups and downs in the relationship between Claudine and Jean Michel, who remained caged and under constant surveillance, we are forced to wonder about government and state control masked under the promise of the ideal society.

His filmography continues with Hollywood, California: A Loser’s Opera (1977), The Little Richard Story (1980), The French (1981), In & Out of Fashion (1994), among others. At the turn of the century Klein filmed Messiah (2000). Somewhere between heaven and hell, Handel’s haunting music is performed by inmates in a Texan prison; a gay choir in Times Square; a group of policemen; a gospel choir; and the best soloists of the time. In Messiah we experience beauty and sadness as we witness the absurd and cruel contradictions of mankind.

Throughout his career Klein has remained an independent artist. He expresses his thoughts freely, and he does not put up with bullshit. In my opinion, William Klein is a true artist, one who creates out of need and not for recognition, an artist who sought his own voice far from the mainstream. Somewhat misunderstood and not to everyone’s liking, he has accomplished the Dadaist objective stated by Hugo Ball, “For us, art is not an end in itself … but it is an opportunity for the true perception and criticism of the times we live in.” The magic of his films is that they not only portrayed their time but also foresaw the truths of the future. Yes, indeed, Klein’s films are alive and kicking!

In cleaning out the K files, I opened Elia Kazan’s folder. For those who are unfamiliar with Kazan, he was a film and theater director known especially for his works On the Waterfront, and  A Streetcar Named Desire. Kazan was nearly blacklisted as a Communist by the HUAC (House of Un-American Activities Committee) but instead turned in eight friends to save his name. In 1999 he was granted an Honorary Academy Award, the Life Time Achievement Award, in 1999 which caused a stir among actors and directors–both current and  those once-blacklisted.

I assumed that either nothing would be in the file or that what did remain would be newspaper clippings and photocopied articles. Don’t get me wrong, these things were in here, too. But what I found was a short correspondence between the Walker and Kazan. The request was to have him in attendance for a potential Regis Dialogue. His response, although not rude, was short and to the point. Something to the effect of, “No, ask me again when I am eighty. And too, flattery is bad for the soul.” I could not help but smile at the pointed rejection, at his dry touch of humor.

Needless to say, Kazan did not take part in a dialogue and passed away in 2003 at the age of 94. In the file, no later correspondence exists nor did he ever come for a dialogue–perhaps nobody contacted him when he was eighty, as he suggested.

via the Wexner blog

The Quay Brothers

Stephen and Timothy Quay (Regis Dialogue honorees in 1996) are known for the incredibly inventive, other-worldly, films that meld objects and people from real life with the stuff of nightmares and fantasy. Over their careers, they developed an unmistakable aesthetic that somehow manages to inspire, confound, and often disturb their viewers. Parsons in New York is going to be offering a rare glimpse into the reality behind the Quay’s fantasies. In an exhibition opening on July 16, Parsons will display eleven of the Quay’s miniature sets along with flim clips. I certainly wish I could catch it.

Street of Crocodiles (Photo: Dave Filipi - Wexner Art Center)

The Film/Video director’s files. Where to begin? Perhaps in starting, it would be appropriate to explain just what exactly these elusive files are. The director’s files consist of nine large and four small drawers in the office that house hundreds of manila folders. There is one folder (in some cases multiple) for each director with whom the Walker has been in contact or has had any relation with. So, since the beginning of the files (which I assume was in the 70’s), oodles of newspaper clippings, letters, and other seemingly pertinent items have been placed in the files. Also since the beginning, a plethora of, well, junk (like copies of copies of articles, “while you were out” slips for past curators, etc.) has been added.

Over the course of the past five months, I have worked on unearthing the contents of these drawers. To be fair, they have been worked on for nearly three years, but I as an individual have only been with them for nearly half a year. In the beginning, it was arduous, even dreadful. Imagine having nine large, mostly unorganized drawers housing dusty, potentially very important or very meaningless content staring you in the face every day. Initially, I thought of the task of cleaning out the files as busy work, as something nobody else wanted to do, therefore intended to keep the intern occupied, while cleaning out the beast that no one else had the time to touch. But luckily, I was wrong. I was terribly, terribly, wrong.

My assignment for the content itself was quite simple-discard any print outs from the New York Times, IMDB, or any other document that is easily accessible online, put aside any direct contact, photo or correspondence with the director to be archived, and keep anything else in the folder. I then replaced the bent manila folders with shiny new ones, labeled them, and maintained/restored the alphabetical integrity.

Last week, after having graduated, I had a new burst of life. It was weird, really, because I assumed that graduation, just like birthdays, would do nothing for me-I wouldn’t feel older or smarter, but would simply keep on keepin’ on with my usual life-but that wasn’t the case. I was extremely motivated to accomplish something, anything (as if a diploma wasn’t object enough) and set my sights on the director’s files. I figured that since they had been worked on for three years with little progress, I was going to be the one to plow through and put my organizational competency (and/or slight OCD) to good work.

What I found was a new yet old aesthetic. I found pieces of history-letters typed on thin onion-skin like paper, photographs, and postcards-from some of the greats such as Maya Deren, Elia Kazan, and Bruce Conner. It really was quite beautiful sorting through these documents, these passing notes of history that still remain. There was something very meditative and methodical about cleaning the drawers, and something that verged on the edge of sad. In handling these carefully crafted artifacts, I realized that the art of the letter is nearly gone. Almost every transmission between the artist and the Walker up until the 1990’s was via letter or postcard. An air exists around these letters of thoughtfulness and sincerity that seems lost in the era of e-mail and constant communication.

It took me just over a week at full throttle to complete the files after chiseling away at them for some time, and strangely enough became saddened as I finished the last drawer. It felt like the end of an era as I put the last folder away, felt as though I just sorted through the last of the sincere. But as I ended my romanticized soiree not only with the files but with history, I realized that because these documents exist here, they not only serve as an aesthetic art form in themselves, but are true artifacts of the past and what is yet to come in the future.

So what I leave you with is a few things. One, think about extending yourself past an e-mail and writing a letter, whether small like a postcard or grandiose like a diligently crafted letter composed on an old typewriter. And two, since I did not know how long the director’s files would take me, I decided to extend a similar unknown to this blog by creating a series of posts (whose length is currently undetermined) that will document in pictures and vivid recollections a few specific encounters I had with the director’s files.

Who Are You, Polly Magoo?

As Rob Nelson mentioned earlier this week, the Walker has held a sizeable portion of William Klein’s films in our Ruben and Bentson Film and Video Study Collection. Some of the prints often go out on loan to other organizations, but there are several cans of film that have remained fairly untouched on the shelves for quite some time. We have a can of film in our archives here that we have long understood to include clips and camera tests from some of William Klein’s feature films. Heading into the Regis Retrospective, we decided to take a closer look at the content of this particular can. What we discovered was not the clips and tests we expected, but actual theatrical trailers for several of Klein’s features, and they are in excellent condition with perfect color. Film trailers can often be interesting in their own right, but in the case of someone like William Klein, they can take on a life of their own. Klein involves himself in every aspect of his films. From the actual photography all the way through the graphic design of the promotional materials, his hand is intrinsically there. These trailers amplify that phenomenon incredibly and become films of their own in some fascinating ways. If you were able to catch Tulpan last weekend, you likely caught the trailer for Who Are you, Polly Magoo? We’ll show that one again before the screening of Mr. Freedom this Friday. The trailers for Eldridge Cleaver, Black Panther and Muhammad Ali the Greatest will be played before the screenings of Who Are You and Messiah this weekend. These trailers are such a treat, and they will knock your socks off. As rare as William Klein screenings are, these trailers are even moreso. Don’t miss them.

William Klein

“In and Out of Fashion” is the ideal name for a William Klein retrospective, not only because the filmmaking photographer has kept an eye on haute couture throughout a career of six decades and counting. Often underappreciated (if not by the Walker, which mounted the first-ever Klein film program in 1989, and has played host to its reels ever since), the confrontational shooter is now ready for his close-up. We might think Klein’s U.S. audience would’ve taken more strongly to his satiric critique of The American Way at some point during the past eight years, but, blessed as we are with eight Klein features (all in 35mm), a shorts program, and the man himself (on June 26), we’ll simply agree the party is better late than later.

In any case, it isn’t hard to see why most any Klein biographer will observe that the born New Yorker’s remove from the mainstream — growing up Jewish in an Irish neighborhood, moving to France after serving in the U.S. Army during WWII — fueled his dual interest in American outsiders (subjects of appreciative documentaries) and insiders (objects of scorn in his satiric fictions). Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? (May 16 at 7:30 p.m.) — the best known (and best) of Klein’s narrative films — has Klein biting the well-manicured hand that had fed him fashion shoots; the first scene, unapologetically crude, finds a bevy of female models wrapped in (and cut by) aluminum siding. Pointedly one-dimensional as well, the title character of Mr. Freedom (May 15 at 7:30 p.m.) — a costumed superhero for the fascist cause, dark as the Dark Knight — is introduced busting an African American family at dinnertime (and much worse). Strike a pose; be The Man.

If these, along with The Model Couple (May 29 at 7:30 p.m.), constitute what a Criterion Collection box set calls Klein’s “delirious fictions,” his trilogy of documentaries about variously oppositional African Americans — Eldridge Cleaver, Little Richard, and Muhammad Ali — forms the core of his equally intoxicating nonfiction. Far and away the greatest of these is, well, The Greatest (June 6 at 7:30 p.m.), a two-part portrait that devotes an hour each to Cassius Clay and Muhammad Ali — the same man, of course, yet separated here by ten years, a load of punches, and countless pages of history. (Subtitle it Out of and In Fashion?) Divided into segments shot during 1964 and 1974, the film captures the boxer’s radicalization around the time of his two early Sixties bouts with heavyweight champ Sonny Liston — a shift that led to Clay’s adoption of the Black Muslim moniker Muhammad Ali.

The Greatest certainly looms large here (”I predict that tonight someone’ll die at ringside from shock!” he exclaims before the rematch with Liston), yet Klein doesn’t just stick to the men in the ring. Delving into the business of fighting (the artist was acutely interested in American advertising wherever he found it), Klein trains his camera on the fans, the odds-makers, the moneymakers, the commentators (including Malcolm X, in one astonishing scene), and the ’60s-era white managers who hold a repugnantly proprietary view of the fighter. (Small wonder the film invokes slavery within its first five minutes, as well as inserting Godardian cutaways to billboards as a reminder that all this brutal humanity is bought and sold.)

By 1974, part of what has changed is that Don King has gained the juice to act as promoter, and that Ali’s fight against George Foreman in Zaire is as much about Black Pride as about boxing. (The racial power of the event can’t be denied: Just two years later, Sly Stallone was moved to deliver the retaliatory Rocky.) Likewise, Klein views the sporting per se as somewhat incidental to the context around it, rendering the bouts in a brilliantly abstract flurry of still photographs whose subliminal force anticipates Raging Bull. Such sequences are undeniably potent, and Ali may indeed have been The Greatest in his field, but it’s outside the ring that Klein and his subject each manage to float and sting.

In Michael Koresky’s liner notes for the Criterion box, the filmmaker is quoted on the subject of Mr. Freedom’s radical irony. “A lot of French critics said [Freedom] wasn’t realistic… But now, if you want to win an argument about a film, you can always say it’s a comic strip.” Helluva point, and it applies equally to what I’d call Klein’s other greatest film, Messiah (May 17 at 2:00 p.m.), which brings a fanciful panel style to the librettos of Handel’s oratorio, if not Christianity in sum. Hmmm…what would Jesus write? Let’s start by saying that anyone intolerant of the nonnarrative Koyaanisqatsi method of wedding classical or “classical” music to contemporary images — or of the notion that an atheist Jew such as Klein would dare to fiddle with a text as divine as Handel’s — will need more than a Christian capacity for forgiveness just to make it past reel two.

When Messiah was released almost a decade ago, Klein disciples were heard to preach to the unconverted, urging them to consider the film’s global-village street scenes in relation to all that’s holy. When Klein puts a shot of worshipful Las Vegas gamblers over the lyric “Behold your God,” we’re meant to note that casinos are modern temples whose congregations are in desperate need of redemption. (Not exactly a novel sermon, this.) Elsewhere, Klein goes looking for God in billboard ads and conjures somewhat subtler juxtapositions, as when “The government shall be upon his shoulder” is sung by an African-American inmate choir; the crime-busting drills of Dallas cops are matched to “He taketh away the sins of the world”; a montage of war-atrocity images accompanies “Let us break their bonds”; and high school kids smoking cigs during recess suggest that we, like sheep, have “gone astray.” (Is the similarity between “astray” and “ashtray” intentional?)

For Fellini enthusiasts, the surreal sight of Bodybuilders for Christ snapping aluminum pans like toothpicks leaves little doubt that Klein once worked as an assistant to the director of Satyricon. And aficionados of the oratorio might relish the symmetrical relationship between this postmodern movie and Handel’s own multinational pastiche of old and new, or between the Paris-based, expatriate American Klein and Messiah’s 18th-century librettist Charles Jennens, described in one CD’s liner notes as a “pompous, conceited, and fabulously wealthy man of leisure.”

Dogmatic by definition, Klein’s Messiah is not unlike a Kevin Smith satire for the museum crowd — and not without value nearing Father’s Day, either, as it commands some of the more unreflective among us to ponder the holiday in a manner that doesn’t necessarily include a trip to the megamall. Still, for Klein’s first visit to the Twin Cities in two decades, one can’t help but wonder: Might the 81-year-old be coaxed to the Mall of America? With camera in tow?

The “Legendary William Klein”. You have never heard of him?

Start with this interview:

If you don’t have time, continue.

Have you ever seen the photograph of a model, fifties black eyeliner, painted nails, flowery hat and the face obscured by smoke wafting from the cigarette in her fingers? The one you know is from Vogue, without being labeled?

You probably know this image without knowing the man behind the camera. This “brainy and pugnacious” artist made a good living with these images, (as well as commercials) but he never stopped taking shots at the fashion industry. He made two films, just to set the record straight - exposing the vapid nature of the fashion model in Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? (Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo?) in 1966 and in 1985 in with Mode En France. (The Walker program also includes a documentary In and Out of Fashion -covering all his work.)

But what is his legacy? Legendary? Surfing the world between being the artist creating fashion images and the street photographer of raw reality; or between the auteur of non-narrative image films, gritty documentaries capturing the Zeitgeist of the revolutionary sixities, and socially critical pop-narrative films. His work is all over the place, and the influence it had is equally pervasive, even if you don’t know the man behind the camera.

His first feature film job as so called “co-director” as he says, was with Louis Malle on Zazie dans le Metro, giving it style Malle didn’t seem able to maintain without Klein. He was a friend and cohort of Alain Resnais, and Chris Marker. Name dropping without context can be frustrating, but Klein and this whole generation of French filmmakers made an indelible mark on the next generation of filmmakers - both popular and independent, Terry Gilliam and David Lynch certainly spring to mind. Marker also published Klein’s first book of photography. These French filmmakers were Klein’s contemporaries and co-conspirators in the sixties.

Without Klein’s Mr. Freedom (1969), I would argue, we might not have Robocop, Rambo, or even Iron Man. The image of the shoulder padded (or buff) male figure crashing through a wall in the name of self-righteous American values, bigger than life. This parody and social criticism - created during the upheaval and revolutionary sixties-has remained relevant, as Klein mentions repeatedly, thanks to Bush’s ascendancy.

Obscure as Mr. Freedom may be, in 1999, singer Beck paid tribute in his music video for the song Sexx Laws (pay attention to Jack Black in the opening sequence)…

His film The Model Couple, might be interpreted as a precursor to reality TV - “With televised fanfare and an overabundance of scientific zeal, Jean-Michel (Andre Dussollier) and Claudine (Anemone) are installed in an antiseptic “happiness capsule,” an apartment in which every aspect of their lives can be monitored.” -described in the New York Times in 1990.

As for his documentaries, he was often astoundingly at the right place at the right moment in history. No one else captured the fervor of the Black Panther and Black Power movement as he did. With Muhammad Ali The Greatest, begun when he was still Cassius Clay, and Eldridge Cleaver, Black Panther, filmed when he happened to be in Algiers where Cleaver was on the run. His film on Little Richard captures the musician’s decline, and again, another piece of history.

Broadway by Light and Messiah are both lyrical, driven by music and the motion of the imagery. If you enter the viewing experience without expecting a narrative, or expecting you will be able to verbalize a plot you will enjoy it. Atmosphere and style reign.

Auteur films, as Raymond Durgnat said in a piece originally published in Film Comment, can’t be defined by their plots, but mainly by “atmospheres generated by style.” And in the end, if we give the viewer a rapid succession of interesting images , they won’t care if they get a plot.

Before William Klein himself comes to the Walker, make sure you take advantage of this chance to see his movies. (and maybe do some research about his legacy issue, there is more to be found)

William Klein is coming to the Walker for a Regis Dialogue. He will be talking with Paulina del Paso, filmmaker and associate programmer for FICCO 2009 (Festival Internacional de Cine Contemporáneo de la Ciudad de México).

“There is energy inside this and it’s not artificial energy because it is nature, very natural energy and people feel this-that it is original and original energy.”

–Sergey Dvortsevoy in an interview with Scott Foundas

For a culture addicted not only to social networking, Twittering, and living on a constant schedule, the last thing we believe we have is time. For many of us, time is money, but to some-namely Sergey Dvortsevoy-time is not of the essence, but rather authenticity is.

Tulpan, Sergey Dvortsevoy’s first feature film, has a rare authenticity that most films lack. Rather than focus on effects and high tech cinematic devices, Dvortsevoy harkened his attention to creating an original film set in Betpak Dala (Hunger Steppe) in Kazakhstan. The land is inhabited only by shepherds and the occasional small village. While working for a Russian aviation company, he fell in love with the country side as he flew over across the Steppe. Immediately after, it became his dream to film there, to show the life of solitude, isolation, work.

Some might call it crazy, others impractical. But for Sergey Dvortsevoy, the only way he could feasibly make Tulpan was to settle in and allow the film to take its shape. He did something most filmmakers are not willing to do: wait. And wait they did.

In an interview with Scott Foundas at the New York Film Festival in October 2008, Sergey Dvortsevoy responded to what life was like over the four year process and similarly responded to the topic in an interview in the Tulpan press kit:

Did you and the crew have to live like nomads to shoot this film?

Sergey Dvortsevoy: Although we built our own camp one kilometer away from the set where we had water and electricity from generators the crew lived a life very close to nomads on the steppe. We also spent a lot of time living with local shepherds and with the actors because they already moved into a jurte (traditional tent house) one month before shooting and really lived there together as a nomad family. Samal Eslyamova (Samal) did all the work of a shepherd’s wife and Ondasyn Besikbasov (Ondas) actually worked as a shepherd. A lot of the things he does in the film he experienced during this period himself.

All this was necessary to give authenticity to the film. Ondasyn and Samal had never lived in a jurte before. Samal is from the north of Kazakhstan, where life is much more European. So the shoot was especially hard for her.

Approximately how many shepherds and their families are still living this nomadic existence in the steppe? Are they dying out as more and more young people like Asa move to the city?

Actually there are still a lot of families living like nomads in Kazakhstan. But it’s different compared to the times of the Soviet Union. Very close to the life that Samal and Ondas live in the film, which is considered a modern life. Then there are different kinds of nomads.

Very few have their own livestock. Most are hired by big sheep owners to tend to their sheep and get paid for this in money or in livestock. But they all still live in jurtes in the steppe and travel around hundreds of kilometers a year. Some of them are very poor. What is shown in the film is a realistic portrayal of the current situation. Almost all young people want to go to the city. Because they think they can make good money there. But then you see them in the big city Chimkent for example sitting there waiting for a job they cannot find. So they end up as construction or temporary workers if they don’t have a special profession. People like Asa and Boni would not find what they are looking for.

It appears that the long, often time’s grueling production of Tulpan is paying off. Critics and cinephiles alike are singing Tulpan’s praises. A.O. Scott of the New York Times recently wrote nice piece on the film, which also garnered the honors of Critic’s Pick. As it travels to festivals and art-house cinemas across the country, it seems even more praise is inevitable.

Recently I read a review that compared Tulpan to the works of John Ford. Although I initially did not see the relation (because, of course I immediately thought of John Wayne), it soon made sense. Ford too was keen on potentially tedious shoots, especially in his early works, and the vast expanse of the landscapes is an obvious similarity. It now seems quite natural that he would be compared to John Ford, and in a sense, this is a Kazakh version of a John Ford film, yet the spatial beauty and breath of the characters and land make it so much more.

Tulpan screens in the Walker Cinema May 8th & 9th at 7:30 pm and May 9^th and 10^th at 2 pm.