Film Screening & Artist Talk: Man Follows Birds

To celebrate the opening of her exhibition Melted into the Sun, Saodat Ismailova introduces and discusses a classic work of Central Asian cinema, Ali Khamraev's Man Follows Birds. During the Soviet Era, filmmakers balanced the need to promote Soviet ideology with the desire to tell stories unique to their cultures. Khamraev's visual poetry resonates with the work of his contemporaries such as Andrei Tarkovsky and Sergei Parajanov.

In Man Follows Birds, an outcast boy leaves his village to travel with his friend, seeking truth and beauty in nature despite the cruelty and violence of adults. Of the film, Ismailova says, “This coming-of-age story is set in a timeless situation. The script was written by Timur Zulfikarov, a major Tajik author and one of the first to develop a distinctive voice that deviated from Soviet ideology, but wasn’t censored. The music, visual language and actors also make this a great film."

Description adapted from Eye Filmmuseum.

Director: Ali Khamraev. Country: USSR. Released: 1975. Length: 87 min. Format: 35mm. Language: Russian with English subtitles.
Image courtesy of Ali Khamraev