Beating Heart: Discovering the Cinema of Kyrgyzstan

“Synchy is useful for me,“ Temirzhan explains. ​“When I’m not making afilm, Ican still engage with cinema and grow our critics’ community.“ Where he finds the time to run and write for the publication is amystery, given the fact he is also ahighly prolific filmmaker in his region. As co-founder of the grassroots film collectiveTartaly, he works alongside agroup of roughly ten young directors who take aradically DIY approach to documentary. After self-funding his graduation filmRomeo with abank loan, Temirzhan realised he ​“couldn’t afford that risk again. It’s the reason my friends and Istarted to make no-budget experimental works, an initiative out of which Tartaly grew.“

Frustrated with the quality of their film education at Kyrgyz-Turkish Manas University and abroader lack of funding for emerging talent, Tartaly continued the cinema expeditions that Aibek Dairbekov, Bishkek IFF’s current artistic director, once organised to the rural corners of Kyrgyzstan. They picked up that baton and set up their own field trips, resulting in astream of non-fiction shorts, some of them compiled on theirYouTube channel. ​“It’s all about improvisation,“ Temirzhan says of the movement. ​“Only during the trip do we find our subject, our characters, and the form in which we’re going to tell thestory.“

This joint operation has already produced 200 films, with one productive year even netting fifty shorts, of which Temirzhan admits ​“only ahandful are good. We also produce alot of shit, which is okay, as we simply enjoy making films together.“ The group regularly gathered to watch the shorts, discuss them, and choose the location of the next trip. And while the frequency of these expeditions has dropped, Tartaly’s ethos stands strong: ​“the collectivised spirit of building alocal cinema.“ They already have their share of success stories: Temirzhan’sThe Green Field (2022), shot in just four hours, had astrong festival run that, alongside his graduation short, earned him aplace at Locarno’s prestigious Filmmakers’ Academy. At home, Tartaly’s films also find avid viewers, notably academics who praise the collective for the way its ethnographic work cinematically maps present-day rural Kyrgyzstan.