{"id":5099,"date":"2025-09-10T11:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T11:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/kazakhstani-cinema\/"},"modified":"2025-09-10T11:30:00","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T11:30:00","slug":"kazakhstani-cinema","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/kazakhstani-cinema\/","title":{"rendered":"NEW WORLD ORDER"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/09\/Steppenwolf-press-still.jpg\" width=\"1290\" height=\"540\" alt=\"\"><\/figure>\n<p><strong>Westerns feel good, feel right, in volatile, contested times<\/strong>. But not just any Westerns \u2014 not kitsch dross like Joel Souza\u2019s <em>Rust<\/em>, which even a real-life blood curse can\u2019t make matter. No: we\u2019re talking feral sagas of de-civilization which burn like a dirty-ass Book of Job, scorched to the bone with Job\u2019s question, \u201cWhy did I not die at birth?\u201d <em>American Primeval<\/em> tried, but it descended into mawkish tearjerker.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the motherland of the frontier genre \u2014 America \u2014 has grown, culturally speaking, too kitschy, too sappy, too soft to be the parent that this genre needs. And maybe our cultural degeneration set in way back, once the closing credits rolled on John Ford\u2019s vicious 1956 masterwork, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/rZpeepxXh7I?si=YnZ_ETx7pkZtc7Gm\" target=\"_blank\">The Searchers<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>More from Spin:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/09\/system-of-a-down-2026-european-tour\/\">System Of A Down Set Sights On 2026 European Tour<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/09\/the-rise-fall-and-rise-again-of-local-philly-legends-algernon-cadwallader\/\">The Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Local Philly Legends Algernon Cadwallader<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/09\/debbie-gibson-memoir-intervew\/\">Her Story: Debbie Gibson Chronicles the Ups and Downs of a Life Beyond Her Dreams<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In the splintering \u201960s, essential Westerns weren\u2019t even made in America and they weren\u2019t made by Americans. <em>A Fistful of Dollars<\/em>, <em>For A Few Dollars More<\/em>, <em>The Good The Bad and The Ugly<\/em>, <em>Once Upon A Time in the West<\/em> \u2014 these salty strolls on the precipice (\u201cget three coffins ready\u201d) were shot in Spain by an Italian: Sergio Leone.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And now? Now that frontier consciousness and manifest destiny are back bigtime as the world reverts, who\u2019s blazing the accompanying cinematic trail \u2014 who\u2019s sitting in the director\u2019s chair?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Adilkhan Yerzhanov is. He\u2019s a razor-sharp moviemaker born in the early \u201980s in a copper-mining region of extreme cold and heat in the center of the then Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic \u2014 now Kazakhstan. Yerzhanov, now in his early 40s, shoots wild, black-humored, sometimes brutal but always striking cinema on the vast steppes of his Central Asian homeland, bordered as it is to the east by Xinjiang (China\u2019s own Wild West) to the north and west by Russia (Europe\u2019s revanchist Black Hat power), and to the south by the restive republics of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<lite-youtube videoid=\"k6bdgV-CoY4\" style=\"bottom: 0; height: 100%; left: 0; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; width: 100%; max-width:100%;\"><\/lite-youtube>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>His latest, last year\u2019s <em>Steppenwolf<\/em>, so far screened mainly at festivals and circulating on Blu-Ray, brings an artist\u2019s eye to the neo-Western. In fact, the opening shot of a handcuffed man standing on the steppes with a bag over his head brings to mind Ren\u00e9 Magritte\u2019s 1928 <em>Lovers<\/em> series \u2014 paintings many believe inspired by Magritte witnessing as a boy his mother\u2019s corpse being retrieved from a river, with her saturated nightgown having risen up to wrap her face.<\/p>\n<p>All faces are unseeable in <em>Steppenwolf<\/em>\u2019s opening scene, the camera rolling on over police riot shields being washed of blood by troopers we never get a square look at until the hooded prisoner makes his way past them and to a bus, finishing a cigarette and boarding under guard by a gunman rendered human in outline only \u2014 his form void-black from boots to ski mask. This is a world in which the individual faces annihilation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI love Magritte and this is an homage to his work,\u201d Yerzhanov tells me. \u201cThe mysterious world of Magritte, his kind of magical realism, that\u2019s what my film is about. A mixture of truth and absurdity. Reality and phantasmagoria.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"853\" height=\"1280\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/09\/IMG_3815.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-472381\" srcset=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/09\/IMG_3815.jpeg 853w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/09\/IMG_3815-340x510.jpeg 340w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/09\/IMG_3815-768x1152.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/09\/IMG_3815-498x747.jpeg 498w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 853px) 100vw, 853px\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Adilkhan Yerzhanov on the tools. (Photo supplied by Adilkhan Yerzhanov)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>This story of a mother, Tamara (Anna Starchenko), searching for her snatched son with the mercenary help of a vendetta-focused brute, Brajyuk (Berik Aitzhanov), remains grittily grounded by the visceral nature not just of the film\u2019s unrelenting violence but its rich, tangible textures of faces, hands, sand \u2014 and by the almost tender if fleeting depiction of people existing in collective isolation, scattered here and there in a broken desert society.<\/p>\n<p>Just like a classic Western! \u2014 but with modern rifles and machinery. It fits, says Yerzhanov, even if his countryfolk are yet to fully grasp it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Western genre is not popular at all in Kazakhstan and much more comedies are filmed, but for me, our culture has a lot in common with Westerns: our landscapes; our past as nomads. We are those same cowboys, even more than the Americans,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1179\" height=\"788\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/09\/IMG_3814.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-472387\" srcset=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/09\/IMG_3814.jpeg 1179w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/09\/IMG_3814-340x227.jpeg 340w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/09\/IMG_3814-240x160.jpeg 240w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/09\/IMG_3814-768x513.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/09\/IMG_3814-498x333.jpeg 498w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1179px) 100vw, 1179px\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Adilkhan Yerzhanov in yellow directing Berik Aitzhanov and Anna Starchenko. (Photo supplied by Adilkhan Yerzhanov)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Adilkhan grew up during the collapse of the Soviet Union and the chaotic years that followed in its former constituent republics. \u201cYou see, we had the \u201990s, and those were the real times of the Wild West \u2014 a ruined society, no law, banditry and poverty. Now we are one of the richest societies in the region, everything is much better. But I remember those times. I lived then and these realities of the Western genre are not just a movie. This is my childhood and youth. I remember when a person relied only on his family and his life. No law, only you and chance.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A blot on Kazakhstan\u2019s recent record is <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/_ru--iNroJQ?si=zz481N6u-1AidpEc\" target=\"_blank\">Bloody January<\/a>, a 2022 spasm of civil unrest in which state security forces killed more than 200 protestors and arrested thousands. \u201cTerrible days,\u201d says Yerzhanov. \u201cEveryone was afraid to leave the house.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While the domestic situation has since cooled off \u2014 \u201cfor me we are the freest in the region right now\u201d \u2014 Adilkhan sees the world devolving overall. \u201cIt seems democracy has gone down the drain. An authoritarian style of government is forming around us and all over the world,\u201d he says. \u201cSomething terrible is happening. Everything is upside down.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hence grim nomadic sagas have come back into their own. \u201cNow the whole world is a big Wild West. Whoever has a bigger Colt feels right in world geopolitics. It\u2019s sad. That\u2019s why the Western has become even more relevant.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2021\/07\/the-greatest-rock-stars-of-all-time\/?utm_source=yahoo&amp;utm_medium=bottomlink&amp;utm_campaign=yahoolink\">click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Westerns feel good, feel right, in volatile, contested times. But not just any Westerns \u2014 not kitsch dross like Joel Souza\u2019s Rust, which even a real-life blood curse can\u2019t make&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3703,31,24,3704],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adilkhan-yerzhanov","category-features","category-pushly","category-steppenwolf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5099\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}