Director Biography and Interview

Sergey Dvortsevoy

Born in Kazakhstan in 1962, Sergey Dvortsevoy worked as an aviation engineer before studying film in Moscow in the early 1990s. His films immediately garnered international acclaim, receiving prizes and recognition at festivals around the world, including the nomination of Bread Day (1998) for the prestigious Joris Ivens Award at the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival. The following year his work was presented at the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, an institution dedicated to Flaherty’s adherence to the goal of seeing and depicting the human condition.

Intimate and elegant, Dvortsevoy’s documentaries are committed to observational filmmaking. His subjects—people living in and around a Russia in transition—try in their individual ways to eke out an existence.

With a keen eye for the poetry and mystery of everyday life, and without narration or other forms of external exposition, Dvortsevoy proposes: “observe together with me quietly and everything will happen”. Tulpan is his first fiction film.

AN INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR SERGEY DVORTSEVOY

Where exactly did you shoot?
TULPAN was shot in southern Kazakhstan, in an area called Betpak Dala (Hunger Steppe). This is a huge part of the steppe, with very flat terrain. Nobody lives there but shepherds. It’s in the middle of nowhere, with the occasional small village. The closest city is Chimkent, 500 kilometers away.

What kinds of difficulties are involved when you shoot on the steppe?
First of all it’s very difficult for the crew to be put in such a remote place for such a long time. Nature is also tough. Not only the weather, but the animals. There are all sorts of insects, poisonous snakes and spiders especially around May, in the springtime when they wake up. We found spiders in our shoes every day. But the most difficult was the way we shot the film as it took much time and patience from the crew.

Did you and the crew have to live like nomads to shoot this film?
Although we built our own camp one kilometer away from the set where we had water and electricity from generators the crew lived a life very close to nomads on the steppe. We also spent a lot of time living with local shepherds and with the actors because they already moved into a jurte (traditional tent house) one month before shooting and really lived there together as a nomad family. Samal Eslyamova (Samal) did all the work of a shepherd’s wife and Ondasyn Besikbasov (Ondas) actually worked as a shepherd. A lot of the things he does in the film he experienced during this period himself. All this was necessary to give authenticity to the film. Ondasyn and Samal had never lived in a jurte before. Samal is from the north of Kazakhstan, where life is much more European. So the shoot was especially hard for her.

Approximately how many shepherds and their families are still living this nomadic existence in the steppe? Are they dying out as more and more young people like Asa move to the city?
Actually there are still a lot of families living like nomads in Kazakhstan. But it’s different compared to the times of the Soviet Union. Very close to the life that Samal and Ondas live in the film, which is considered a modern life. Then there are different kinds of nomads. Very few have their own livestock. Most are hired by big sheep owners to tend to their sheep and get paid for this in money or in livestock. But they all still live in jurtes in the steppe and travel around hundreds of kilometers a year. Some of them are very poor. What is shown in the film is a realistic portrayal of the current situation. Almost all young people want to go to the city. Because they think they can make good money there. But then you see them in the big city Chimkent for example sitting there waiting for a job they cannot find. So they end up as construction or temporary workers if they don’t have a special profession. People like Asa and Boni would not find what they are looking for.

Please tell us about working with sheep and especially how you accomplished the lamb birth scene.
The method of shooting was very unusual. We started shooting the two key scenes of the script first, which were the two lamb birth scenes. We had to shoot them immediately and under time pressure. A sheep giving birth won’t wait for preparation. I knew from experience that it would be very difficult to catch a sheep that’s giving birth and that she would allow us to shoot this. Usually they run away. So I told the camera department to be ready for hard work. First they had to follow sheep without the camera to understand how they move, then with a small video camera and only after these tests could they actually use the film camera. I told them it would take hours and even days. My DOP Jola Dylewska is great and she understands very well what I want.

The crew spent two weeks just following sheep. In the third week, we tried several times on video to understand what camera movements should be used when the sheep is giving birth. Once the camera crew was technically ready, we waited for one of the thousands of sheep to give birth. The shepherd had a radio station and would call us as soon as one was ready.

When the scenes were shot, I understood that they are so unique and powerful that I had to adjust the rest of the film to those scenes rather than adjusting them to the script. From that on we opened the film to the experiences we made in everyday life and let them influence the story-building. In the end the film grew like a tree and many things were unpredictable.

How did you prepare the leading actor for the lamb birth scene?
I didn’t rehearse with the actor before the actual birth scene. I told him what to do according to how the scene developed. He didn’t know he would actually have to help the lamb to exit the womb. Only when I saw the lamb could die, I decided he had to help. He ended up very shocked, as he’s not from the countryside. It was the first time he did something like this. But this is why the scene is so organic. We were very lucky to catch this scene.

In the end the most difficult thing for the actors was to be as strong as the animals. Because all the animals in the film are fantastic and the actors should not be worse. Everything had to be just as authentic. This was very hard for everybody, actors, sound, camera and directing to achieve this same level of truth throughout the whole film. Sometimes we had to shoot a scene 25 times.