Four arduous years in the making, Ardak Amirkulov’s 1990 historical epic about the intrigue and turmoil preceding Genghis Khan’s systematic destruction of the lost East Asian civilization of Otrar is a one-of-a-kind experience. Amirkulov’s film, shot in sepia-toned black-and-white, is at once hallucinatory, visually resplendent, and ferociously energetic, packed with eye-catching (and gouging) detail and B-movie fervor, and traversing an endless variety of parched, epic landscapes and ornate palaces.
Tag: USSR
It all starts with the Eskimos waiting for the end of the polar night, which is about to give way to the sun. However, on the appointed day, the sun does not appear in the sky. It does not happen the next day. Excited residents turn to the village shaman for help, who deceives the hunters to give him all hunting trophies for shamming, and vilely refuses to help. And then the brave young hunter sets off in search of the sun.
Rein Raamat’s Hell adapts the engravings of Estonian graphic artist Eduard Wiiralt into a surreal, grotesque, and heavily sexual animated short. Wiiralt’s three source works, “The Preacher,” “Cabaret,” and “Hell,” date back to the early 1930s and portray a cacophony of bacchanalia, hysteria, and violence in the final years of Estonian independence amid the unrest of the Great Depression and European instability.
1918. Workers from Petrograd come to Altai region to establish the first agricultural commune. In spite of the hostility of the local White Army cossacks the workers build houses, cultivate land. The poor peasants are turning towards the commune. However, White Army cossacks take vengeance on the members of the commune.
Neighbourhood children play a game: one of the kids dances in the centre of the circle while the others shower him or her with compliments. A little girl, Inga, who lives with her single mother, is friendly and honest. She usually receives a lot of compliments and is therefore considered a beauty. Everything changes when a new boy moves into the neighbourhood. Being rude, he does not fit in and soon earns himself the nickname Mute. He does not like Inga’s freckles and calls her ugly. Mute’s words hurt Inga deeply and she sets out to look for attraction.
A group of hunters enters a ghost town in Central Asia with a mission to kill packs of abandoned, and now wild cannibal dogs. But tables turn and there seems to be no way for the hunters to survive the horrific battle.
The first part of the film — popular science — tells of recent (mid-1960s) achievements in the exploration of the Moon. Scientists discuss the hypothesis of the origin of the lunar maria, about the temperature of the lunar surface and the supposed properties of the lunar soil.
The second part of the film — science fiction — shows how the Moon in the near future will be developed by people from a hypothetical first lunar mission to lunar cities and laboratories.