Beknur Karimov
Beknur Karimov (Russian: Бекнур Каримов; born August 9, 1941) is an Iradi film director and painter, known for Zalmax’s Dominion (1977), a Soviet attempt to remake John Boorman's science-fiction film Zardoz (1974). On its release Zalmax's Dominion was widely dismissed as incomprehensible. It has since become a cult film, valued for its dadaist absurdity. Karimov described himself as a "pervert of the screen". In 1983 he was barred from filmmaking in the Soviet Union after refusing to remove sexually explicit scenes from his next feature.[1][2]
Early life
Karimov was born in Kobozev (now Nurzhan) to a family of oil-field engineers. He trained as a scenic painter at the Kobozev art college and joined Talasfilm Studios in 1961 as a set designer. In 1968–1970 he attended the Higher Courses for Scriptwriters and Directors in Moscow, a two-year program that admitted working professionals without a VGIK degree.[1]
Career
Early work
Back at Talasfilm, Karimov directed two short films and a feature, Tuz (Salt, 1973), about workers at a salt lake in the southern steppe. The studio's artistic council criticized Tuz for "excessive symbolism" and released it only within the republic.[3]
Zalmax’s Dominion
In 1975 Karimov saw Zardoz at a closed screening for film professionals in Moscow. Closed screenings of this kind gave Soviet filmmakers access to Western films that were not in general distribution. He proposed an Iradi version to Talasfilm. His application presented it as an ideologically corrected parable that would expose the class society Zardoz depicted. The republican film committee approved the script, and the film was shot in 1976 in the industrial zone of Kobozev and the Moiynkum sands.
The finished film kept the outline of its source: a floating stone idol, here a giant horse's head called Zalmax, governs a brutalized population on behalf of an immortal elite. Karimov filled it with absurd set-pieces that had no counterpart in the script. Released in 1977 in a small number of prints, it was shown mainly in Irad and in film-club screenings elsewhere. Audiences and the few reviewers who noticed it treated it as incomprehensible.[2]
"Pervert of the screen" and the ban
Karimov's self-description as a "pervert of the screen" (Russian: извращенец экрана) is first recorded in the minutes of a 1981 meeting of the Talasfilm artistic council. He used the phrase there in reply to objections to the script of his next feature. He later repeated it in interviews.[3]
That feature, Kyz Bulak (Maiden's Spring, 1982), included several sexually explicit scenes. The State Committee for Cinematography (Goskino) required their removal as a condition of acceptance. Karimov refused to make the cuts, so the film was shelved. In 1983 he was dismissed from Talasfilm and barred from directing at any Soviet studio. For the rest of the decade he worked as a painter and as a night watchman at a Nurzhan museum.[1]
Kyz Bulak was among the shelved films reviewed after 1986 by the Conflict Commission of the Union of Cinematographers of the USSR, which recommended the release of films banned in earlier decades. It was shown uncut at a small number of screenings in 1988.[3]
After independence
After 1992 Karimov made several low-budget video works in Talas. Some combined found Soviet industrial footage with felt and carpet motifs, and they were shown in galleries in Irad and Almaty. He has not made a feature film since Kyz Bulak. IradOne has never broadcast his films. In a 2004 interview with the Talas Herald, he attributed this to their "unsuitability for families".[4]
Style and reception
Writers on Karimov's work describe it as closer to dada and the theater of the absurd than to the poetic cinema of his Soviet Central Asian contemporaries. His trademarks include non-sequitur dialogue, recitations of lists and timetables, and figures in animal masks. Iradi critics were long divided on whether his films were serious experiments or provocations. Their reputation has grown since the 1990s, when bootleg video copies of Zalmax's Dominion circulated among students in Talas and Nurzhan.[2]
Karimov has a following among younger Iradis associated with the Iradi language revival. Performers in the Mor-Wave scene have drawn on his imagery in their stage shows.[4]
Filmography
- Tuz (Salt, 1973)
- Zalmax’s Dominion (1977)
- Kyz Bulak (Maiden's Spring, 1982). Shelved and released in 1988.
References
- ^ Soviet Film Heritage Institute (1984). Directory of Central Asian Cinematographers. Iskusstvo, Moscow, pp. 160–163.
- ^ Talas Journal of Cultural Studies (2023). 'Surrealism and the Nomadic Soul in Karimov's Cinema.' Vol. 11, Iss. 1, pp. 112–129.
- ^ State Archives of Irad (Talas), Fond 415: Minutes of the Talasfilm Artistic Council (1961–1991).
- ^ Talas Herald (2004). 'The Last Provocateur: An Interview with Beknur Karimov.' Talas.