REBIRTH
ISLAND / KALADAN KELGEN KYZ
KAZAKHSTAN 2004
Director: Rustem Abdrasov, 80 MIN
KANALDAN KELGEN KYZ tells the story of a boy growing up in the early
60s in a small village on the Aral Sea who falls in love with the daughter
of a functionary from the city. But the strictly enforced communist system
in the village has no place for inappropriate feelings and poems, for
privacy or the arts. As a counterpoint, literature plays an independent
role in the film, which is dominated by voice-overs. Recordings of the
director’s father, the poet Zaraskan Abdrasov – famous
in Kazakhstan and often censored – fill the soundtrack. He reads
the autobiographical elegy that inspired the film. Rustem Abdrasov
sees this film as an “intellectual dialogue” with his father
and his life-story. The film shows us images of Kazakhstan’s barren
and sand-filled vastness, the glittering lake, camels and fishing-huts
in sepia tones, while colour is used to show the emergence of the boy’s
physical longings. The unequal couple’s shy liaison leads to an
uproar and moral indignation in the multi-ethnic society of the village.
Facing the headmaster’s tribunal, the boy commits treason against
his own feelings. There is nothing left to do but leave the place of his
youth. Located between educational novel and classic coming-of-age story,
the film also tells us about the beginning modernisation of this remote
landscape: about photography and radio, automobiles and the first man
in space.
Caligari: 08.04. / 4 p.m.
Bambi: 09.04. / 12 noon
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