THE FALL OF OTRAR (1991)
![]()
Randwick Ritz, Sydney:
7:50 PM
Tuesday 06 May
Lido Cinemas, Melbourne:
7:40 PM
Tuesday 13 May
Rating: Unclassified 18+
Duration: 156 minutes
Country: Kazakhstan
Language: Kazakh, Mandarin Chinese, and Mongolian with English subtitles
Cast: Dokhdurbek Kydyraliyev, Tungyshpai Zhamankulov, Bolot Beyshenaliev
Director: Ardak Amirkulov
SYDNEY TICKETS ⟶
MELBOURNE TICKETS ⟶
7:50 PM
Tuesday 06 May
Lido Cinemas, Melbourne:
7:40 PM
Tuesday 13 May
Rating: Unclassified 18+
Duration: 156 minutes
Country: Kazakhstan
Language: Kazakh, Mandarin Chinese, and Mongolian with English subtitles
Cast: Dokhdurbek Kydyraliyev, Tungyshpai Zhamankulov, Bolot Beyshenaliev
Director: Ardak Amirkulov
SYDNEY TICKETS ⟶
MELBOURNE TICKETS ⟶
4K RESTORATION – AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE
“The film restoration of the year. The new 4K restoration of Ardak Amirkulov’s intricate historical epic, … will hopefully help this monumental film to reach as many people as possible.” – Film Comment, New York
“Ardak Amirkulov’s staggering historical epic (co-written by Aleksei German) concerns the intrigues and turmoil preceding Genghis Khan’s systematic destruction of the lost East Asian civilization of Otrar. The movie that spurred the extraordinary wave of great Kazakh films in the 1990s, The Fall of Otrar is hallucinatory, visually resplendent, and ferociously energetic, packed with eye-catching (and gouging) detail and traversing an endless variety of parched, epic landscapes and ornate palaces. But this is also one of the most astute historical films ever made, its high quotient of gore grounded in the bedrock realities of realpolitik: when the Kharkhan of Otrar is finally brought before the Ruler of the World, he could be facing Stalin or, for that matter, any number of latter-day CEOs. A movie that has everything, from state-of-the-art 13th-century warfare to perfumed sex, The Fall of Otrar is truly a one-of-a-kind experience”. – New York Film Festival notes to accompany the world premiere of the 4K restoration, Lincoln Centre, NY, October 2024
Introduced by Rob Hughes at Ritz Cinemas and Lido Cinemas
This program is presented with the generous support of Giulia Campolmi.
“The film restoration of the year. The new 4K restoration of Ardak Amirkulov’s intricate historical epic, … will hopefully help this monumental film to reach as many people as possible.” – Film Comment, New York
“Ardak Amirkulov’s staggering historical epic (co-written by Aleksei German) concerns the intrigues and turmoil preceding Genghis Khan’s systematic destruction of the lost East Asian civilization of Otrar. The movie that spurred the extraordinary wave of great Kazakh films in the 1990s, The Fall of Otrar is hallucinatory, visually resplendent, and ferociously energetic, packed with eye-catching (and gouging) detail and traversing an endless variety of parched, epic landscapes and ornate palaces. But this is also one of the most astute historical films ever made, its high quotient of gore grounded in the bedrock realities of realpolitik: when the Kharkhan of Otrar is finally brought before the Ruler of the World, he could be facing Stalin or, for that matter, any number of latter-day CEOs. A movie that has everything, from state-of-the-art 13th-century warfare to perfumed sex, The Fall of Otrar is truly a one-of-a-kind experience”. – New York Film Festival notes to accompany the world premiere of the 4K restoration, Lincoln Centre, NY, October 2024
Introduced by Rob Hughes at Ritz Cinemas and Lido Cinemas
This program is presented with the generous support of Giulia Campolmi.
FILM NOTES
By Daniel Bird
By Daniel Bird
Daniel Bird is a writer, curator and filmmaker.
ARDAK AMIRKULOV
Born in 1955 in the village of Ak-Kul in the province of Djambul, Ardak Amirkulov graduated from the Kazakh State University with a major in philology. In 1984, he enrolled in the director’s course at VGIK, the Russian State Film School, in the workshop of Sergei Soloviyev. Before graduating, he was recruited by Kazakhfilm to direct Svetlana Karmalita and Aleksei German’s script, The Fall of Otrar. Since his debut, Amirkulov has directed five more features: Abai (1995), 1997: Rustem’s Notes With Drawings (1997), Goodbye, Gulsary! (2008), The Surgeon (2022) and The Land Where the Wind Stood Still (2023). Between 1994 and 1997, he served as president of Kazakhfilm. He has also taught the film directors’ workshop at the Kazakh State Film Institute of Theatre and Cinema.
THE FILM
The Fall of Otrar (1991) constitutes a synthesis of three unique voices. First, it’s the debut of Ardak Amirkulov, part of the rabble of filmmakers who spearheaded what can now be considered the new wave of 1990s Kazakh cinema. Second, it’s the adaptation of an epic script, that is as bizarre as it is unique, by the great dramaturgist, Svetlana Karmalita, and her husband, Aleksei German. The script was written during the mid-1980s, i.e. at the height of Gorbachev’s doctrines of glasnost and perestroika. It was also composed in the wake of an aborted attempt by the couple to film Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s Hard to Be a God. At the time, the science fiction parable was being filmed by the German filmmaker Peter Fleischmann. While Karmalita and German would eventually get their chance to adapt the same source novel (released in 2013, after a shoot which began in 2000), it is interesting to consider The Fall of Otrar as sublimating the elliptical narrative, melancholic hubris, and, above all else, the textures that would come to define their Hard to Be a God, released after German’s death, completed by Karmalita and their filmmaker son, Aleksei German Jr.
Set at the turn of the thirteenth century, The Fall of Otrar is a film in two parts, two panels in a diptych of sorts, each focusing on different characters whose fates are bound. The first half, ‘The Scout’, focusses on Unzhu, a member of a nomadic tribe, the Kipchaks, who, seven years previously, was dispatched by Kairhkhan, ruler of the city of Otrar, to spy on the Mongols. We begin with Unzhu’s return, and the intel he reveals to both Kairkahn and Mukhammedshakh, leader of Khorezm, an empire dominating much of what is Central Asia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Afghanistan and parts of Kazakhstan. According to Unzhu, Mukhammedshakh should not be concerned with what he perceives as a threat from the West, but rather the East, for Genghis Khan and his army of Mongols have turned their attention away from China and plan to invade Khorezm. Mukhammedshakh, however, orders Unzhu to be tortured, as a means of establishing his true loyalties. The second half, ‘The Fall of Otrar’, takes place after the decimation of Mukhammedshakh’s army. All but one of the cities of Khorezm have fallen. Only Otrar remains, the cradle of Kazakh civilization. This second part traces Kairkhan’s valiant but futile defence.
The Fall of Otrar occupies a space somewhere between German’s Hard to Be a God, the masterwork of one of German’s contemporaries, Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev (1966), and another historical epic in two parts: Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible (1944 / 1958). Not unlike Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987), the first part of The Fall of Otrar, ‘The Scout’, is a taut, rigorous and, above all else, claustrophobic set up for the more expansive, and arguably more conventional second part. Interrogation is followed by protracted torture, punctuated by scenes of equally ceremonial sex. So much of this sequence takes place, like Eisenstein’s film, in corridors and chambers, almost always torchlit. Seemingly arbitrarily, sepia alternates with black and white, and colour. The effect is hallucinatory, where the colour always dominates, to the point of artificiality. As Amirkulov put it, ‘a colour undermines a texture’. (1)
So much of Amirkulov’s world-building is derived from sounds and textures. There’s something cosmically elemental about the world of Otrar – earth is baked in the sun, draped with snow or sodden in rain, wind carries columns of black smoke. ‘The Scout’ ends with a shot expected but denied for the best part of an hour: a lone rider galloping across a bleak, windswept landscape. From there on, Amirkulov’s canvas broadens, in a manner that evokes Tarkovsky, while arguably pre-empting German’s climatic directorial meditation on frustration in the claws of tyranny. There are crane shots worthy of Leone, but any sense of epic in the conventional sense gives way to penetrating zooms, homing in on the faces of those slain or about to be. Or, what Amirkulov calls ‘the Kurosawa phenomenon’, i.e. tightening the frame – something he grounds in the visual traditions of Eastern arts, where vertical space is banished. The Fall of Otrar is a wholly embodied film, in the sense that, through empathy, the viewer feels the heat, rain, and, indeed, pain. Foreheads branded, limbs hacked, tongues cut – even a face is immortalised in molten silver. The violence, however, is never gratuitous, but always matter-of-fact. All of this, however, is at the service of a tale of two characters enmeshed in the realpolitik of a world in which the tectonic plates of power are shifting, where the empires of old are falling and new ones emerging. The Fall of Otrar emerged in 1991, at the fall of the U.S.S.R. It was and is a resounding contemporary film.
Notes
Set at the turn of the thirteenth century, The Fall of Otrar is a film in two parts, two panels in a diptych of sorts, each focusing on different characters whose fates are bound. The first half, ‘The Scout’, focusses on Unzhu, a member of a nomadic tribe, the Kipchaks, who, seven years previously, was dispatched by Kairhkhan, ruler of the city of Otrar, to spy on the Mongols. We begin with Unzhu’s return, and the intel he reveals to both Kairkahn and Mukhammedshakh, leader of Khorezm, an empire dominating much of what is Central Asia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Afghanistan and parts of Kazakhstan. According to Unzhu, Mukhammedshakh should not be concerned with what he perceives as a threat from the West, but rather the East, for Genghis Khan and his army of Mongols have turned their attention away from China and plan to invade Khorezm. Mukhammedshakh, however, orders Unzhu to be tortured, as a means of establishing his true loyalties. The second half, ‘The Fall of Otrar’, takes place after the decimation of Mukhammedshakh’s army. All but one of the cities of Khorezm have fallen. Only Otrar remains, the cradle of Kazakh civilization. This second part traces Kairkhan’s valiant but futile defence.
The Fall of Otrar occupies a space somewhere between German’s Hard to Be a God, the masterwork of one of German’s contemporaries, Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev (1966), and another historical epic in two parts: Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible (1944 / 1958). Not unlike Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987), the first part of The Fall of Otrar, ‘The Scout’, is a taut, rigorous and, above all else, claustrophobic set up for the more expansive, and arguably more conventional second part. Interrogation is followed by protracted torture, punctuated by scenes of equally ceremonial sex. So much of this sequence takes place, like Eisenstein’s film, in corridors and chambers, almost always torchlit. Seemingly arbitrarily, sepia alternates with black and white, and colour. The effect is hallucinatory, where the colour always dominates, to the point of artificiality. As Amirkulov put it, ‘a colour undermines a texture’. (1)
So much of Amirkulov’s world-building is derived from sounds and textures. There’s something cosmically elemental about the world of Otrar – earth is baked in the sun, draped with snow or sodden in rain, wind carries columns of black smoke. ‘The Scout’ ends with a shot expected but denied for the best part of an hour: a lone rider galloping across a bleak, windswept landscape. From there on, Amirkulov’s canvas broadens, in a manner that evokes Tarkovsky, while arguably pre-empting German’s climatic directorial meditation on frustration in the claws of tyranny. There are crane shots worthy of Leone, but any sense of epic in the conventional sense gives way to penetrating zooms, homing in on the faces of those slain or about to be. Or, what Amirkulov calls ‘the Kurosawa phenomenon’, i.e. tightening the frame – something he grounds in the visual traditions of Eastern arts, where vertical space is banished. The Fall of Otrar is a wholly embodied film, in the sense that, through empathy, the viewer feels the heat, rain, and, indeed, pain. Foreheads branded, limbs hacked, tongues cut – even a face is immortalised in molten silver. The violence, however, is never gratuitous, but always matter-of-fact. All of this, however, is at the service of a tale of two characters enmeshed in the realpolitik of a world in which the tectonic plates of power are shifting, where the empires of old are falling and new ones emerging. The Fall of Otrar emerged in 1991, at the fall of the U.S.S.R. It was and is a resounding contemporary film.
Notes
- Ardak Amirkulov, in interview by Gulnara Abikeyeva, Iskusstvo kino, no. 3, 1992.
THE RESTORATION
Source: DCP Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna
Restored by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in collaboration with Ardak Amirkulov. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. The Fall of Otrar (1991) was restored in 4K from the original camera and sound negatives. Scanning was performed by ARDFILM in Almaty (Republic of Kazakhstan). Ardak Amirkulov supervised the scanning and approved the final grading. Special thanks to Daniel Bird. Restoration work was completed in 2024 by L’Immagine Ritrovata.
![]()
![]()
![]()
Director: Ardak Amirkulov; Production Company: Kazakhfilm Studios; Producers: Aleksei German, Svetlana Karmalita; Script: Aleksei German, Svetlana Karmalita; Photography: Aubakir Suleyev, Sapar Koichumanov; Editor: G Kystauova; Production design: Aleksandr Rorokin, Umirzak Shmanov; Costume Design: Lyudmila Trakhtenberg; Music editor: Aiken Kuatbayeva
Cast: Dokha Kydyraliyev (Undzhu), Tungyshbai Dzhamankulov (Kairykahan), Bolot Beyshenaliev (Shinvyskhan), Abdurashid Makhsudov (Mukhamedshakh)
Kazakhstan | 1991 | 156 Mins | 4K DCP | Colour, Sepia | Mongolian, Kazakh, Mandarin with English subtitles | UC 18+
Restored by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in collaboration with Ardak Amirkulov. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. The Fall of Otrar (1991) was restored in 4K from the original camera and sound negatives. Scanning was performed by ARDFILM in Almaty (Republic of Kazakhstan). Ardak Amirkulov supervised the scanning and approved the final grading. Special thanks to Daniel Bird. Restoration work was completed in 2024 by L’Immagine Ritrovata.
Director: Ardak Amirkulov; Production Company: Kazakhfilm Studios; Producers: Aleksei German, Svetlana Karmalita; Script: Aleksei German, Svetlana Karmalita; Photography: Aubakir Suleyev, Sapar Koichumanov; Editor: G Kystauova; Production design: Aleksandr Rorokin, Umirzak Shmanov; Costume Design: Lyudmila Trakhtenberg; Music editor: Aiken Kuatbayeva
Cast: Dokha Kydyraliyev (Undzhu), Tungyshbai Dzhamankulov (Kairykahan), Bolot Beyshenaliev (Shinvyskhan), Abdurashid Makhsudov (Mukhamedshakh)
Kazakhstan | 1991 | 156 Mins | 4K DCP | Colour, Sepia | Mongolian, Kazakh, Mandarin with English subtitles | UC 18+