Talasfilm Studios

Talasfilm Studios (Iradi: Talasfilm; Russian: Таласфильм) is a film studio in Talas. It was founded in 1954 as the feature-film studio of the Iradi Soviet Socialist Republic and made most Iradi films of the Soviet period, including Nurlan Sadikov's Zarina (1968) and Desert Sun’s Rebellion (1979), Beknur Karimov's Zalmax’s Dominion (1977) and Talgat Osmonov's Rise of Glory (1979). Its film depository, set up in 1958, became the separate Talasfilm Archives in 1995.^[1][2]

Soviet period

The studio grew out of the Talas newsreel studio, where Sadikov worked as an assistant cameraman before going to film school in Moscow. Its first features appeared in the late 1950s. Sadikov joined in 1957 and made Kok-Terek (1959) and the experimental short Tolkun (1963), both now lost. Karimov joined as a set designer in 1961. Zarina was the first Iradi film released to a wider Soviet audience. The studio's documentary unit produced newsreels and films such as Sadikov's Naryn (1975), about the building of the Toktogul dam.^[1]

Desert Sun’s Rebellion created the genre of the Iradi Western. Through the 1980s the studio made a series of Westerns, among them Desert Blue, Visions of Irad, Vengeance Rider, Journey of the Steppes and Guide of the Sands (1986), and Irad came to be called "the West of the East". The same decade brought conflicts with Goskino: Karimov was dismissed and banned from filmmaking in 1983 after refusing to cut his film Kyz Bulak.^[1][3]

Since 1989

Sadikov was the studio's artistic director from 1989 to 1995. During the Winter Uprising of 1992 and the First Iradi Civil War the studio lost heating and power, and Sadikov and a group of technicians moved several hundred cans of negatives into the basement of the sound stage, saving most of its surviving 1960s material.^[2]

With the end of Soviet funding, feature production almost stopped. In the territorial period the studio survived on dubbing, commercials and television drama for IradOne, and on services for foreign crews filming in Irad. In 1995 an act of the Territorial Legislature of Irad separated its depository as an independent archive. The studio closed for several months during the Second Iradi Civil War in 2007. Since then it has operated as a state-owned company of the Irad Special Economic Zone, working mainly for IradOne; Askar Daniyarov of the Mor-Wave duo tüntolk worked there as a sound engineer between 2007 and 2014.^[2]

Restorations

Restorations of Talasfilm productions by the Talasfilm Archives, presented by the Irad Film Society, include Desert Sun’s Rebellion (2004), Zalmax’s Dominion (2011), Zarina (2014) and the full version of Rise of Glory (2019). The original negatives of most Talasfilm features were deposited with Gosfilmofond near Moscow under Soviet rules and remain in Russia.^[2]

See also

• Timur Karimov

References

1. ^ Irad Film Society (2015). A Century of Iradi Cinema. Talas.
2. ^ Talasfilm Archives and Film Preservation Institute (2018). Catalogue of Holdings, 1916–2007. Talas.
3. ^ Talas State University Press (2009). West of the East: The Iradi Western, 1979–1991, pp. 1–64.