User:Samira/interview

-Would you like to introduce yourself for me?

Well, (she laughs) If I have to My name is erm… I come from a small village in Kazakhstan. Accidentally, I appear to be a very good, maybe not famous movie-maker. In my country I’m already recognised.

-Where you intending for an international audience?

When you are in film school and I must say that there is only one film school in Kazakhstan You don’t really think about that it’s more about dealing with all those horrible professors that are trying to harass you as a female director, it’s not an easy life So you are really thinking about not making an idiot of yourself during small screenings in the underground scene for example in Bucharest

As my work has a very strong political agenda the audience is not important in the commercial sense it is actually important to have people hear your voice, and redistribute your voice as widely as possible

-You say you neglect your audience yet want to communicate..

Neither In Kazakhstan we have the great tradition of political cinema which tells you from very early on that you actually have a mission People have no idea of the dark side of politics in K. It has a very complex history It’s not only about promoting your country but it’s actually also about bringing a function of help to people who are murdered daily or raped, I mean you know? As far as I’m concerned, the world show know it.

-Your intention is to expose the underbelly… any incident hat drove you to do it?

It’s very hard… As a child… my family settled on the Ukrainian border a few centuries ago basically and a small example… of my grand-grand-grand-grand grandparents I can actually tell you the very bloody story of my nation since almost in every generation someone in my family was killed several times our home was burned by wild hoards of kazoos or illiterate greasy Russians they would come and… completely, without mercy, raise our villages to the ground

it’s always about this disdain to these lower class peasants farmers, these people who are abused by Military upper classes, you end up having one goat and your whole existence is basically based on this one animal and of course i was deeply touched by what happened to my grandmother she was raped by Kazak soldiers and since then in a way I can’t say what my identity is since we could never really find out who are we I mean… do we belong to the oppressors or to my own family? there’s a lot of conflict going on I deeply believe that you can explain the whole story of global conflict with this one story Having few people related by blood and just sitting in one room or garden and taking about mundane things, and all dramas and dilemmas are there to be discovered.

Im not making spectacular movies, or movies that are very shocking, bloody or brutal I think the key is to capture those small moments of violence that takes place between people and I must say that I mostly work with relations small relations, things between mother and son, small gestures that happen daily, you know whilst making tea

-Were you successful?

I would say my approach is quite conflicted, attempts like that can never be successful Failure is embedded in those attempts because you cannot promote movies like that and offer them to the wider audience as something which might actually not entertain them but they also leave the audience completely helpless just watching this person, a regular person what can they dp about that?

It’s a very cruel gesture to drag them to this feeling of helplessness with you to put them exactly in the same position I never considered this storytelling as something that should succeed in bringing a message to the people those stories are worth sharing, and i think they need to be told but as you asked me I think it’s not an idealistic gesture, it’s partly an evil gesture

-Wow that’s so conflicting… you seem to emphasise oppression, is it true?

When you are a young student you are not actually thinking about what you’re going to go You want tot capture reality with intuition You need to make movies because the reality around you tells you to do that none in film school can tell you why they’re doing something reflection comes with age and also having to justify your work to producers and budget wise its very complex to give a right reason for why any particular production, film, story should be told…

it is always a very complex thing I’m actually fooling people

I think I started with a very egocentric reason, I just wanted to purify myself through those stories it’s a typical approach of every individual working it starts very beautifully and romantic but further on you find yourself in problems considering why exactly my voice should be heard I think I’m telling important stories, I can justify this intention but yes I am oppressing the people It’s something very…

unintentional harm

-So why do you continue?

Awareness always hurts I think its necessary for us to build our adulthood as human beings often I’ve experienced this kind of oppression that was brought to me by other people other stories that were revealed to me I don’t know if the good parent is the parent who keeps lying to you about santa cause at some point this drama must happen..

maybe i should step back a little and take up the idea that dramatic, traumatic, horrifying ideas just come to us and we need to look at them in order to not be ignorant, to discover something in ourselves there are also bright sides of oppression especially this mild oppression that provides you with this comfortable distance from the drama that is maybe happening in someplace unknown