Кек / Месть.
Director: Yermek Shinarbaev
Country: Soviet Union
Year: 1989
Duration: 1.39
Languages: Russian / sous-titres français [no English subtitles]
Restored in 2010 by World Cinema Foundation at Cineteca di Bologna / L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in association with Kazakhfilm Studio, the State Archive of the Republic of Kazakhstan and Ermek Shinarbaev. Restoration funding provided by Armani, Cartier, Qatar Airways and Qatar Museum Authority.
Category: 35 mm, Master Class: Kent Jones
Print: Cineteca Bologna.
Introduced by Kent Jones, hosted by Timo Malmi.
Viewed at Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF), Kitisen Kino, Sodankylä, 15 June 2019.
Wikipedia: The film is divided into 8 segments.
Prologue (set at the Korean royal court of the Kingdom of Joseon in the seventeenth century)
Tale 1 - Yan (small Korean village in 1915)
Tale 2 - Tsai
Tale 3 - The Mute One
Tale 4 - The Monk
Tale 5 - Elza the Romanian
Tale 6 - Revenge
Tale 7 - The House
"In the beginning of the 40s, hundreds of thousands of Koreans that had lived in the Russian Far East since the XIX century were forcibly displaced overnight according to Stalin’s orders. They were regarded as traitors and public enemies. Women, children, old people, were sent away with no explanation. The Korean diaspora, with a population of over a million, has been a forbidden topic for many years. Revenge is the first film telling the story of their tragedy." (Ermek Shinarbaev, May 2010)
The Criterion Collection: "A child is raised in Korea to avenge the death of his father’s first child in this decades-spanning tale of obsession and violence, the third collaboration between director Ermek Shinarbaev and writer Anatoli Kim. A study of everyday evil infused with philosophy and poetry, this haunting allegory was the first Soviet film to look at the Korean diaspora in central Asia, and a founding work of the Kazakh New Wave. Rigorous and complex, Revenge weaves luminous imagery with inventive narrative elements in an unforgettable meditation on the way trauma is passed down through generations."
Mia Öhman (MSFF): "When the Soviet Union collapsed, the Kazakh New Wave quietly emerged in Kazakhstan’s cinema. It peaks in Yermek Shinarbaev’s and screenwriter Anatoli Kim’s collaboration. The most touching and harshest of their three mutual films is the amazingly beautiful geographical and psychological odyssey Revenge, finished in 1989 and premiered internationally at the 1991 Cannes film festival."
"The film is divided into eight parts, of which the first takes place in the 17th century Korea: the emperor’s son is trained as a soldier, but his best friend grows to be a violence-abstaining poet. In 1915 a teacher kills his student, a little girl, in a fit of rage. The girl’s father promises to revenge the act and follows the teacher to China, but is unable to carry his plan out. At his deathbed, the father asks his young son to revenge for him the death of the stepsister."
"Instead of telling a straightforward story of the sweetness of revenge, the film problematizes the topic by showing various situations and relationships. Towards the end the narrative condenses into a dream-like visual experience. The great cinematographer Sergei Kosmanyov finds his way to deliver feelings and dimensions that have rarely been depicted in cinema in such a convincing way. Revenge has been restored as part of Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project." (Mia Öhman / MSFF)
AA: I am embarrassed to confess that I saw Revenge / The Reed Flute for the first time and even more embarrassed that this is my first experience with Kazakh cinema in general.
I am deeply impressed by the force of the imagery in this movie directed by Ermek Shinarbaev based on a screenplay by Anatoli Kim. Revenge is a work of atavistic poetry whose theme of the blood feud has an affinity with Tengiz Abuladze's Vedreba, based on the poem by Vazha Psavela. At the same time it is a work of epic resonance, dealing with the tragedy of Stalin's forced deportation of a million Koreans to Central Asia.
There is highly charged quality in the eight segments that span decades and even centuries. Revenge is a film that needs to be seen more than once.
"Injustice is not fertile ground for poetry", states the poet in the prologue. Paradoxically, the poetry of this film stems from epic injustice. Haunting images include turtles, rugged mountains, immense expanses, sickles of vengeance, a Romani woman, Elza, attempting to seduce a young man to impregnate her, and the awesome sea. Intended victims die accidentally before the avenger manages to catch them. "Love I have forgotten". "Most of all I have been afraid of the sea". "Birds escape the fire". "The flames of sunrise".
There is a unique, overwhelming quality of luminosity in the film. It is as if oversaturated with light. Very appropriate for Midnight Sun Film Festival.
The gorgeous print does justice to the wonderful cinematography.
This Kazakh film was seen in a Russian version. Even Korean dialogue was overdubbed in Russian (we heard a little bit of Korean, and the same male actor spoke in Russian over all the Korean dialogue).
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