Ran across a great series of photographs by Manuel Capurso called From Akmola to Astana, which documents Astana capturing both the old and the new.

It’s an interesting set. Anyone who has lived in Astana for some time will have noticed the sharp contrasts between the two cities and the surrealism of new modern buildings being constructed in the middle of the steppe. He’s captured a lot of that as well as some faces of Astana.

I have no idea if the pictures are being exhibited anywhere but there are a few on his site and more on Capurso’s blog.

It’s also interesting to Search for Kazakhstan (NSFW) on redbubble. I seem to be the major contributor now but there are some great landscapes and also a few pictures of naked people bathing in the spring between Shimbulak and Medeu. That’s why I mark the link above as Not Safe For Work.

I thought it was a great movie, definitely one of the best to come out of independent Kazakhstan. However it was not what I expected. In earlier posts I had given the impression that it was a roll in the aisles comedy. Looking back on reviews I read, I’m not sure where I got that idea. It has some funny moments and it’s lighthearted–especially compared to a lot of Kazakh films which tend to be heavy handed and dramatic. But it also has some dramatic touches and the overall story of a sailor from Russia trying to fit in on the steppe is touching. Particularly his attempts to seduce the only women who lives anywhere near him, Tulpan.

Most interestingly, the film shows life in the steppe of Karaganda in modern times. The main characters live in a yurt in the middle of nowhere. Literally, there’s no one else around. They herd sheep, and during the movie they are suffering from a plague of still-borns. There’s one one truck that serves the entire steppes to bring feed or fertilizer or goods-and it’s a jerry-rigged tractor that keeps breaking down. They are certainly not well off. Yet they are not portrayed either as pitiful or as noble in their suffering. In fact they don’t appear to be suffer. It’s a very straightforward look at real life that few films outside of documentaries can achieve. In fact, most documentaries don’t manage to show their subjects this directly and unbiasedly.

Another wonderful facet of the direction is the way the camera doesn’t always focus directly on the main subject. There’s a great scene of a veterinarian examining another still-born and talking to someone who keeps following him. Eventually the camera pans out and we see a camel screaming at him. In this way, you feel you are in the scene, because you don’t have an omniscient point of view. This technique of keeping something off camera is also used to great comedic or dramatic effect in some scenes.

That being said, some might be put off by the lack of plot. There is a plot of sorts but the film is not driven by it. One result of this is that there are many scenes of the family in the yurt, doing very little and certainly not moving the plot forward or entertaining the viewer in some way. However it’s an effective device once again to show what life is really like on the steppes of Kazakhstan. There’s a wonderful series of recurring devices–a little girl singing, a boy listening to the radio–that again make the audience feel present in the moment.

In short, I highly recommend getting Tulpan and checking it out!

Just an interesting article I came across the other day, Nazarbayev tries to set an example by personally taking an interest in Kazakhstani films [RU]. The President plans to visit movie theaters and watch Kazakh movies in order to encourage other people to follow his example. He says that because he is president, people tend to do what he does. For example, he was the first to ski at Skimbulak and the first to play tennis, making both activities popular. It would sound a bit egotistical if it wasn’t true that many civil servants and powerbrokers in Kazakhstan do try to follow his example in an attempt to curry his favor.

The President recommended that filmmakers create more films about the history of modern indepenedent Kazakhstan, citing the new capital, the chairmanship of the OSCE, the Islamic Conference and the Asian Winter Games of 2011, among the “dramas, loves and tragedies” of the 18 years of independence.

I agree that Kazakhstan needs to make more films. I like some of the films that have come out of Kazakhstan or been done with Kazakh participation like Nomads and Mongol. Schizo was an excellent film and Racketeer, while not a great movie, shows some potential. I look forward to watching the director’s most recent film (Brothers?). I just ordered Tulpan from Amazon.com and look forward to watching that.

But the fact is that there is a long way to go for Kazakh filmmakers. There have been some flops like Kek which was badly filmed, badly acted and difficult to follow. Birzhan Sal was well-acted and filmed not badly but it felt like it had no story. It just kind of drifted until he died. A number of Kazakh films have a sort of slow, drifting feel to them as opposed to a plot-driven or character-driven movie, which tends to turn me off. Now, this may just be an aesthetic difference of opinion. But some films really do show an objective lack of production values with bad cinematography, contradictory plot points, or confusing changes of scene.

Also, recently a member of Parliament declared that movies like Tulpan and Kelin shame the country by showing poor people who do not live in Western standards. I remember the same criticism being leveled at Schizo when it came out. Kairat Champion, a comedy about a man trying to win back his lover who has gone lesbian, sounds hilarious but has also received a fair amount of criticism as being immoral because it features a gay character. But if American filmmakers tried to make films that were only flattering to the US, we would never have films that are so popular in the former USSR like, “Gone With the Wind” or “Once Upon a Time in America”. Stars like Jim Carrey and Rowan Atkinson (who is British and plays Mr. Bean, of course) would be fired for making people think their compatriots are idiots! To let great films in Kazakhstan flourish, the authorities need to lay off on the moral criticism and let the artists work freely.

Another issue is that award-winning films like Tulpan aren’t even available on DVD in Kazakhstan. Nor are there commercials on TV about these films. I tend to hear about a new film, months after it has come out from a friend or colleague. Plus the theaters only show films for a week or two, so if you aren’t watching for a film, you’ll miss it. Theaters need to show movies for longer and advertise more in order to get people in. And Kazakh people need to be able to buy Kazakh films on DVD (or video or Blue Ray). Film making is a business and I don’t understand why there are habits or policies in place that limit sales.

So dear reader, what is your favorite Kazakhstani film? What should I be watching. I did post on this before and note down the answers but then sadly in the transition I lost my comments.

Available in a lot of different colors and styles so check out the My Yurt Or Yours page to preview it and to pick up a couple hundred for your friends and relatives for Christmas, New Years, Hanukkah, Kwanza or even Old New Year.

Not too hard to find funky Russian fonts, but a real surprise was the official Kazakh fonts site of the Committee on Languages of the Ministry of Information and Culture. Nice, free fonts that do use the Cyrillic keyboard in a variety of styles. So you can use these for Kazakh or Russian or any other Cyrillic language. Now all I need is a font that makes Cyrillic letters look like Arabic, the kind Eastern restaurants and souvenir stores in Kazakhstan often use, and I will be home free.

Anyway, on to a review of the album itself. It’s a solid release from the band that features a domibra player, a metal guitarist and a violin player as well as a rhythm section of drummer, keyboards and a bass-player. If you’ve heard Ulytau before, the tracks on this album are not a surprise. If you haven’t, think Vanessa Mae and other classical/rock/prog-rock/electronic pop fusion bands that are influenced by Yes, Metallica, and Bach. What Ulytau adds to this admittedly small but popular genre is the Kazakh influence. The sound of the dombira itself is quite unique. While a guitar can also double as a rhythm or a lead instrument, the way the dombira is plucked adds a percussive quality to the tune.

Beyond that, seven out of the ten tracks on Jumyr Kylysh are Kazakh folk songs. The other three are classical works, but the one of them is the Turkish inspired Turkish March by Mozart. The other two are Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in Dminor and Winter from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

In general, Ulytau is a talented ensemble and there are no flaws in their playing or their arrangements. They tend to err on the side of melodiousness in this particular album, which I appreciate because some of their other works (and works by other Kazakh musicians who use electronica in their tunes) has erred on the side of pop, with sweet keyboard melodies or hard hitting beats. It’s certainly one of their best albums. I am particularly fond of their arrangement of the well-known (in Kazakhstan, of course)Ata Tolgauy. It’s been covered by Urker, among others, and shows up as incidental music at concerts, plays, in TV shows and movies. With it’s simple melody, you’d think I’d be sick to death of this tune. But their arrangement of it starts off as a poppy ballad complete with synth pan-pipes, then moves to an acoustic-guitar driven rhythm section, making it sound like the Eagles or Dan Fogelberg. The distorted guitar comes in, without being overbearing, and brings us to a counter theme. Toward the end we get the tune in a more traditional setting, with violin and guitar playing the melody in unison, and the dombira in the background. It’s a clean, little arrangement that never gets boring, but doesn’t overshadow the tune itself.

Their cover of the Turkish March is also fun as they switch around with which instrument plays the lead melody. The disco-funk vamp intro, which reappears half-way through the song to back up a Kazakh melody, promises something a little more fun that never gets realized. Yapyr-Ai, a ballad, is nicely placed in the middle of the album as it’s a fairly straight-forward tune without a lot of production effects. It sounds like Asylbek Enseppov could have done it and it refreshes the ear from all the prog-rock.

The biggest disappointment is probably the Toccata and Fugue. It’s a tune that the whole world knows so it’s hard to do something original with it. And Vanessa Mae got big doing a rock-fusion version. Here Ulytau basically covers Vanessa Mae covering Bach. Except for the “Here We Go Now” and some of the more overtly techno parts of Mae’s version, this pretty much sounds like Mae.

Overall, this is a solid album, and an excellent introduction to the talented group. I do hope that in the future they will explore other genres of music and choose a few more obscure tunes or even move into composition, but I will definitely be making a trip to the record store (am I showing my age?) to pick this album up.

It’s being sold now in Kazakhstan in record shops and is also available on Amazon.com or off of iTunes as an MP3 download under the nameTwo Warriors. You can get the whole album or download individual tracks. Interestingly the band’s official website lists Paramount Records as the producer of the album, so perhaps it is available for purchase in Western countries.

Ulytau consists of Nurgaysha Sadvakasova (violin), Max Kichigin (solo-guitar), Erzhan Alimbetov (dombira), Novel Adonin (keys), Evgeniy Sizov (bass-guitar), Igori Dzhavad-Back (percussion) and is the brainchild of producer/musician Kydyrali Bolmanov.

Even though jokes aren’t funny when you have to explain them, I will say that the word in the pic means ass, and has the same connotation in Russian of badly done, crappy (pun gleefully intended), disorganized, and so on.

Note: the concert poster on the right is for the Almaty show.

Little to clearly distinguish this show as Kazakhstany:

Sources: Yahoo! News Photos and The China Daily