BERWICK FILM SOCIETY GALA: Man Follows Birds (Chelovek ukhodit za ptitsami) Ali Khamraev Uzbekistan 1975 35mm 87 mins Friday 22nd September, 7pm The Maltings Cinema
A medieval pageant of boyhood presented with a visual majesty to rival Khamraev’s contemporaries Andrei Tarkovsky and Sergei Parajanov. Man Follows Birds is a mystic vision that exhibits Khamraev’s instinctive feel for landscape and the natural world. A young boy gets a brutal sentimental education under the open skies of medieval Uzbekistan. Ali Khamraev’s stylistic tour de force is almost unclassifiable—a mystic vision, an eastern western, a pageant of color and movement, a portrait of adolescence painted in broad, expressionistic strokes. Man Follows Birds moves from one sumptuous moment to the next: rides through ecstatically colored landscapes, a trio of friends waking up covered in apple blossoms, the hero imagining his beautiful and long-dead mother in images that have an abstract power and beauty. Man Follows Birds is a film that truly deserves the word ‘visionary’.
Uzbek Rhapsody
A prominent director of the Soviet thaw generation, Khamraev’s films resonate with the artistic adventurousness and intellectual curiosity of his sixties contemporaries Tarkovsky and Paradzhanov. After graduating from VGIK in 1961, he began a prolific career that was highlighted by several internationally renowned films, including White Cranes, Extraordinary Commissar, and The Seventh Bullet-- one of the most widely seen Central Asian films of all time. Beyond his native Uzbekistan, Khamraev also directed films in Tajikstan, Russia, and Afghanistan, and his belated return to directing-- Bo Ba Bu --was an Italian co-production that featured an eclectic cast of Central Asian characters to embody the former Soviet republics at the end of the last century. Selected Filmography Passion of Igor Savitsky (2015), The Artists/ Artisty (2007), A Place Under the Sun (2004), Bo Ba Bu (1998), Who is Insane?/ Kim jinni? (1992), The Garden of Desires/ Sad zhelaniy (1987), I Remember You/ Ya tebya pomnyu (1985), A Bride from Vuodil/ Nevesta iz Vuadilya (1984), Hot Summer in Kabul/ Zharkoye leto v Kabule (1983), Triptych/ Triptikh (1979), The Bodyguard/ Telokhranitel (1979), Gody bratstva i ispytanij. Uzbekistan 1941-45 (1976), Man Follows Birds/ Chelovek ukhodit za ptitsami (1975), The Fan/ Poklonnik (1975), Lenin and Uzbekistan/ Lenin i Uzbekistan (1974), The Seventh Bullet/ Sedmaya pulya (1972), Lenin and Turkestan/ Lenin i Turkestan (1971), Without Fear/Bez strakha (1971), The Extraordinary Commissar/ Chrezvychainyj komissar (1970), The Red Sands/ Kransye peski (1968), Dilorom (1967), Babushka, pyati tysyach vnukov (1967), White, White Storks/ Belyye, belyye aisty (1966), Yor-yor/ Gde ty, moya Zulfiya? (1964), Does He/She Love or Not? (1964), The First Confession/ Pervoye priznaniye (1963), Where There is Much Sun/ Tam, gde mnogo solntsa (1962), Salom, ‘Bahor’! (1962), Short Stories About Children Who.../ Malenkiye istorij o detyakh, kotorye... (1961) Distribution: Seagull Films
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