Section: Feature Film Competition

SVET-AKE

THE LIGHT THIEF

Aktan Arym Kubat
Kyrgyzstan, Germany, France, Netherlands, 2010, 77 Min
Pallas Film GmbH

Kyrgyzstan, far from the capital city. The everyday life of a small village. Primitive mines, the most genuine and kind you can imagine, are detonated in vain. What doesn't work out on a bigger scale can provide for wonderful insights in the smallest of villages however. Svet-Ake has a command of the fundamental principles of electricity, he makes light, saves children from trees at breathtaking heights and dreams of tremendous windmills and powered two-wheelers for the good of everyone. The conditions though, they're not ideal, his wife laughs at him, his daughters feel sympathy, he himself considers himself as nothing more than a plaything of the powers that be. No wonder, his boundless open-heartedness mercilessly dissipates his energies. There used to be a country. Kyrgyzstan. Administered by the Soviets for decades, domesticated, but still Kyrgyz, very much so, from the mounted hordes, hunting the billy goat, to the patriarchal illness that only permits one to feel a man when father of  a son. Who can't stand it when a naked women births a camel and a naked man can't find her vagina. Rather than a nostalgic retrospect we are served up a wonderfully charming catalogue of images that stretches from the traditional to the modern, laughing all the while in the face of present-day criminals. Shot with a light-heartedness and upbeat tempo, as if life were eternal.

Filmformat
35mm | Farbe / colour
Drehbuch
Aktan Arym Kubat, Talip Ibraimov
Kamera
Khasan Kydyraliyev
Ton
Bakyt Niyazaliev
Schnitt
Petar Marković
Ausstattung
Talgat Asyrankulov
Musik
Andre Matthias
Darsteller
Aktan Arym Kubat, Taalaikan Abazova, Askat Sulaimanov, Asan Amanov, Stanbek Toichubaev
Produzent
Altynai Koichumanova
Produktion
Pallas Film, Oy Art, A.S.A.P. Films, Volya Films
Co-Produktion
ZDF/Arte
Kontakt
Pallas Film GmbH
Mansfelder Straße 56
06108 Halle / Saale
Germany
Tel: +49.345.67 87 323
Fax: +49.345.67 87 325
office@pallasfilm.de
www.pallasfilm.de
Aktan Arym Kubat

Aktan Arym Kubat - born 1957 in Kyrgyzstan. Graduated at the Academy of Arts Bishek (at that time Frunze). In 1980 he began to act as a set decorator, until he wrote his first screenplay in 1995.

Movies
BEZHALA SOBAKA (1990, short)
GDE TVOY DOM, ULITKA? 1992)
THE SWING (1993)
BEKET (1995, short)
BESHKEMPIR (1998)
MAIMIL (2001)