General Information

Original Title

Khasan-Arbakesh

Author/Creator

Kimyagarov, Boris, director.

Language

Russian.

Subtitles

English

Published

Tajikistan : Tajikfilm, 1965.

Physical Description

DVD-ROM (91 min.)

Digital ver. identifier

HU_OSA_00002354

Contents/Summary

Summary

At first glance, youmight think that the film is going to tell a trivial story about an arbakesh named Hasan, who has a cart and a horse and dreams only of earning enough to be able to marry his beloved. As in a traditional fairy tale Hasan is young and handsome, strong and determined and very much in love. The fairy-tale plot, however, is set against the very real historical background, which soon starts to interfere brutally with the romantic thrust of the story. The film was shot during the so-called "Thaw" of the 1960s and contains a metaphorical protest against the establishement of Soviet regime in Tajikistan. Its main theme ia the clash between the traditional Tajik culture, and the new "invading" Soviet one. Unlike most of the "revolutionary" films that were shot in the Soviet Asian republics and focused on the bloody fights between the "reactionary" forces of traditional societies and the "righteous" Soviet "liberators," "Hasan-Arbakesh" shows the process of peaceful sovietization, that nevertheless, ruthlessly reroutes the fates of the characters. Hasan's cart is replaced by a truck, personal work becomes collectivized, the veil is jettisoned and a liberated woman, like Hasan's beloved Saodat, joins the Komsomol and is sent to teach in a romote kishlak. By the end of the film, the ever-joyous,singing and dancing Hasan is only a shadow of his former self, lost in a totally new strange world, full of "kolkhoz peasants", "proletarians" , pioneers with bugles and drums, and endless columns of cars, "busy building Stalin's communism."

Subjects

Genre

Fiction films

Bibliographic Information

Title Translation

Hasan-Arbakesh

Note

Duration: 01:31:00

Holdings

Item Type	Current Location	Call Number	Status	Shelving Location	Public Note
DVD-ROM	OSA Film Library	FL Record 0622	Available	-	-
Digital film	OSA Film Library	FL Record 0622 (HU_OSA_00002354.mp4)	Available		Access Copy, MP4 format