Tuojabyn, yllyybyn
Ölbötün tuhugar
Yytabyn saryalga
Yryabar suulammyn
I extol [my love], I sing
So that it doesn’t die
I send it to the light of dawn
I enfold it in song.
Stepan Semenov
The emergence of Sakha cinema reflects a changed possibility for Indigenous peoples to incorporate new techniques and technologies into their self-expression, in a renegotiation of history, identity and place. Caroline Damiens has shown how Sakha films and their histories have repositioned the Sakha community within the Russian Federation and the Arctic—as they show Sakha people to represent a distinct history and culture, while remaining integrated into the Russian Federation and the broader Arctic (Damiens 2014, 2015). Sakha filmmakers have adapted a global form of cultural production to their local context and concerns, in common with other Indigenous communities across the Arctic, and within Russia (Damiens 2014, Dobrynin 2015, Hart 2021). This article elucidates an important element within this contemporary Sakha cinematic expression. It shows how Sakha films can express a profound interconnection between the sentient landscape and creativity, with deep roots in the Sakha people’s pre-Soviet history and practice. Thus the reconfigurations of place and history Sakha cinema manifests include historical entanglements between Sakha people, and the non-human inhabitants of their environment (cf. Mészáros 2020). These engagements manifest the action of creative, loving beings in the land through artistic expression; nowadays, this artistic expression includes cinema.
Eva la Cour, following Gilles Deleuze (1986), suggests that images “make perceptible the system of relationships between their elements” (La Cour 2021, 12). Films therefore are more than representations: they crystallize specific networks of relations at the time of their making, and of their subsequent viewings. The sights, sounds and stories within films are inseparable from the circumstances within which the films were made, in addition to the effects of these films on their viewers—and hence no clear boundary can be drawn between representation and reality. The recognition of this lack of boundary is particularly important within the discussion of Sakha cinema. As this article will demonstrate, Sakha cinema retains a distinctive interrelation between the on-screen narrative, and the stories of recognizable members of the Sakha community.
The intersection of representation and reality in Sakha cinema reflects the response among Sakha communities to the introduction of cinema, as we describe in the first section. This response was conditioned by the specific experience of landscape and community that remained influential among the Sakha communities of the early twentieth century, despite Tsarist-era attempts at Russification (e.g. Popov 1910). Early twentieth-century ethnographic data shows that Sakha people lived through and within their active, personal relationships with the non-human beings in the natural world (e.g. Popov 2008, Kulakovskii 1979, cf. Ingold 2000). These non-human beings included a vast network of persons who were not always visible, although their benevolent or destructive action influenced humans, animals, weather and landscape; these persons included the guardians known as ichchi, the abaahy demons, and ajyy deities.
Many pre-Soviet Sakha genres of music, art and poetry worked to influence human and non-human relationships: they were active interventions into the flow of life, rather than abstracted representations of it (cf. Harris 2017, Ferguson 2019, Balzer 1997, Khudiakov 1969). Thus Sakha people understood cinema to have its own life and authenticity, as we explain below: cinema took its place as an art form that was knitted in to the flow of events, like other Sakha genres. The intersection of representation and reality in Sakha cinema is therefore a dimension of older Sakha perspectives that do not include conventional European distinctions between nature and culture, humanity and the environment, and life and art (cf. Ingold 2000, Mészáros in this issue). In this article we examine films that were made primarily for Sakha audiences, and are therefore quintessential examples of the contemporary Sakha adaptation of cinema. These films demonstrate the continuing influence of pre-Soviet Sakha perspectives; in doing so, they also display the capacity of Sakha and Indigenous Arctic cinemas to challenge conventional European assumptions about ecology, and the power of cinema within it.They are examples of the interrelationship between Sakha communities and their landscape Csaba Mészáros describes in his contribution to this special issue, as they show how this interrelationship continues to exert its effects over peoples’ lives.
In this article we present studies of two Sakha films, Don’t decipher love (Taajymang Taptaly, Mikhail Lukachevskii, 2016) and Ajyy Uola (Russian title: Poslannik nebes, Eduard Novikov, 2014), to show that the systems of relationships these films reveal include a responsive landscape with its variety of non-human inhabitants. These films are based on the life stories of two prominent Sakha popular singers of the early 1990s, who both died prematurely—they are Stepan Semenov (1963-1992), the writer of this article’s epigraph, and Aleksandr Samsonov (1978-1998). We draw heavily on our interviews with these films’ directors—Mikhail Lukachevskii and Edvard Novikov, respectively—presenting their own descriptions of these films and their effects.[1] In this way we hope to sustain the blurred boundary between representation and reality these films demonstrate.
Our conversations with Lukachevskii and Novikov were conducted in Russian. The terms and statements used by both directors demonstrate the continuing influence of the Sakha national revival, which began in the late 1980s. The activists behind this revival carefully adapted European and Russian terms and narrative tropes into their efforts to explain Sakha heritage and its value to the Sakha population (e.g. Egorova 2001). One example is the Russian and European word ‘shaman’. Readers will notice these Russian or global tropes in conversations that nonetheless show how a responsive environment generated the musical creativity of Semenov and Samsonov, as it shaped the content of these films, and their subsequent influence. Lukachevskii and Novikov used the Russian word priroda to describe the landscape. This word is usually translated into English as ‘nature’—creating the impression that these directors are invoking the European distinction between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’, when their other statements indicate that they are referring to a much more complex interrelationship between human persons and the landscape. We have tried in our translation of these interviews to convey their ambivalent use of Russian or European terminology. Our efforts draw on the knowledge and experience of this paper’s Sakha author, Gela Krasil’nikova. Eleanor Peers is English, and has been visiting Sakha (Yakutia) since 2003.
Another consequence of the Sakha national revival is the contemporary emphasis on the benevolent aspect of the traditional Sakha relational ecology, reflected in these interviews. This benevolence finds its strongest expression at the ancient Sakha Yhyakh festival, which ethnographers past and present have identified as a celebration of the sentient landscape, and its gifts (Sieroszewski 1993, Popov 1910, e.g. Romanova 1994). The revitalization of the Yhyakh has been a key focus of the Sakha revival more generally (Romanova 1994), fostering a greater awareness of the landscape as the home of kind, creative beings. We introduce Sakha cinema below with a short discussion of its history, before presenting first Don’t decipher love, and then Ajyy Uola.
A short history of Sakha film
In order to explain the specificities of Sakha cinema visible in Don’t decipher love and Ajyy Uola, we need to make a small retrospective excursion into its history. We can identify two significant stages in the generation of the Sakha cinema we know today. These stages span, firstly, cinema’s first appearance in Yakutia, starting with the first cinema screening in 1911 (Kletskin 1973), and, secondly, the formation of Sakha (Yakutia)’s own cinema industry, starting with the foundation of the state film company Sakhafilm in 1992 (c.f. Damiens 2014, 2015). The paragraphs below discuss the period of formation over the twentieth century, from the adaptation of the cinematic art form to the appearance of the country’s own film industry in 1992. We suggest that the initial Sakha perception of cinema as ‘alive’ transformed through Sovietization into a capacity to adapt Soviet cinematic genres into the expression of a living landscape, once Sakha people became actively involved in film-making.
The first cinematic screenings in Yakutia were very popular, despite the high price of entry tickets and the low quality of technology (Sivtsev 2012). At first screenings were very rare: Yakutia lacked the necessary infrastructure, and the huge distances between population centers, the harsh climate, and the poor roads rendered the renewal of Yakutia’s cinematic repertoire impossible. As far as the latter is concerned, foreign films were shown alongside historical dramas and Russian classics (Sivtsev 2012, 9).
Today we can only imagine how Yakutia’s citizens reacted to such films—however, we can be sure that the appearance itself of cinematography had a massive significance. If the inhabitants of towns in central Russia were in some way prepared for the appearance of cinematography by their long exposure to the European art forms in which cinema has its roots, then the situation in Yakutia was completely different. Like Lumière’s train, cinema burst into Yakutia’s reality and brought with it an entirely different world. Cinema had arisen out of a profoundly different aesthetic tradition: the Sakha expressive genres of the time did not reflect the distinctions between art and life, representation and reality, and nature and culture that had emerged in Europe. The Russian presence had of course generated new Sakha genres of storytelling and art, such as ivory carving—however many ancient forms of expression remained dominant, such as the Sakha epic tradition, the olonkho (Sieroszewski 1993). These older genres of literature, poetry, music and art were integrated into the Sakha people’s relationship with the land, and had a concrete effect on life and fortune. For example, a performance of the olonkho is known to have cured a village from smallpox (Illarionov 2006, 44). Artistic expression was integrated into the flow of life, and acted within it. Hence in Sakha language people called films “tyynnaakh”, meaning “having breath,” and by extension “alive”—and “d’ingneekh”, or “real” and “true.” Films were seen to have their own life and authenticity, rather than as abstracted representations.
Researchers of Siberian cinema have noted that for citizens who lived far from the large central towns cinema, and in part newsreels, became “a trusted source of information, if we take into account that fact that the language of cinema was much more accessible to illiterate viewers than the printed word” (Svetlakov and Svetlakova 2019, 67). Even though the “accessibility” of the language of film can be questioned, cinema owes its future development as “the most important of the arts” to this point of view (Lenin 1973, 75-76). Thanks to a grandiose campaign of “cinefication”[2] after the October Revolution in 1917, cinematography was transformed from an expensive entertainment for occasional individuals into the main weapon of the Soviet cultural revolution, and an integral part of daily life.
The next stage of this development during the early Soviet period was a heroic mobilization of projectors, carrying films in automobiles, on oxen, horses, reindeer and dogs to the farthest corners of the Soviet Union—along with the building and equipping of cinemas, the training of professionals, and the formation of cinematic archives. This mobilization continued even during the Second World War. These activities witness to the processes of interiorization, or “rotation,” according to L. S. Vygotskii’s terminology, of the new art form—and of course this journey of assimilation followed the course of the Soviet Russian cinema school (Vygotskii 2005, 371).
At first Yakutia and its inhabitants appeared on cinema screens as a distinct space in newsreels and documentaries, which depict the region’s life in the 1930s. The Central Studio of documentary films opened in Yakutsk in 1937; this was the first regional branch of the Soiuzkinokhroniki (newsreel) studio, based in Irkutsk. The reels of Yakutia’s northern land and inhabitants shot by correspondents of this studio form the foundation of many themed films and episodes within the popular cinema documentaries of the time. The images of a harsh region, freed by the Soviets from the dark perspectives of the past, and a community rising from the gloom of ignorance to become a powerful people working for the good of their Motherland, formed the main thrust of these films, which in fact attracted directors from the entire Soviet Union. After the war life in the Union’s Republics become one of documentary film’s main themes—forming a “political and economic cinematic atlas of the country,” in which alongside representations of the exotic “national color” of the national Republics grew the image of the country of the Soviets as the incarnation of the equality and unity of the brotherhood of the peoples (Savvinov 1977, 25, cf. Hirsch 2005). This message of course had an important ideological significance—but we contend that it did in fact help cross-cultural connections. It was in large part thanks to these documentaries that the citizens of this huge country were able to gain an impression of its cultural diversity (cf. Sarkisova 2017).
If until the middle of the twentieth century Yakutia’s inhabitants only participated in filmmaking as elements within the overall northern landscape, then from the 1950s Yakutia’s citizens moved to the other side of the camera. The first screenwriters appeared—Nikolai Mordinov-Amma Achchygyja, Dmitrii Sivtsev-Suorun Omollon, and Lev Gabyshev—along with the first Sakha actors, creating an image of their people and presenting their distinct culture and character on the screen, and the first camera operators, who enabled viewers to see the world through Sakha eyes (cf. Damiens 2015).
An example of the latter is the camera operator Nikandr Savvinov, who started working as a cinema correspondent at the Irkutsk East Siberian Studio of Newsreels. In his creative style can be seen a special attitude towards the conveying of Yakutia’s landscape, which was not typical of the time. The landscape for him was not a picturesque background for the conquering hero, but an enlivened world with its own character, full of a particular severe and subtle beauty, which greatly exceeded that of human persons. One example is the film Speak, Yakutia! (Kepse, Iakutiia!; Russian title: Rasskazyvai, Iakutiia!, 1972), in which the northern landscape astonishes with its beauty. This film, made to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Yakut Soviet Socialist Republic, appears to be a typical example of the propaganda of its time. Its main aim is to demonstrate the dramatic feats of Soviet education, industry and agriculture. However it seems that Savvinov was able to infuse a Sakha perspective into this film, through his camera work. Long shots of Yakutia’s landscape appear at intervals, and form a contrast with footage of land being exploded in order to start a mine. The film’s story of the wonders of modernization is gently undermined by this contrast (c.f. Raheja 2007). These first experiments with the various activities that form the cinematic art witness to the movement towards the assimilation of cinema’s language. They enabled the first intuitive attempts to express a Sakha perspective, as a hint of its future incarnation. As Savvinov’s work shows, this perspective included a specific relationship with an inspired landscape.
Aleksei Romanov’s film Maappa (1986) can be regarded as the first truly independent Sakha expression in film; Romanov is acknowledged to be the first Sakha film director. This short film is based on a novella by Nikolai Zabolotskii-Chyskhan, which in turn is based on traditional narratives. In this work we can already see the direction in which Sakha cinema was to develop, as it worked out its particular style. On the one hand, the film presents a story of love that exists in many cultural contexts—and on the other, the Sakha “national color” is very obvious in the film’s plot, characters, language, costumes, and sounds. On a deeper level the influence of the Sakha people’s tradition—and in particularly the epic tradition—can be seen in the particular aesthetics of this film. For example, it mixes the real and unreal. Its events can be interpreted metaphorically or literally, reflecting the earlier Sakha understanding that cinema is in some sense alive. Maappa also shows the landscape to be responsive and sentient, as Mészáros describes in this special issue. In doing so it demonstrates the continuing significance of older Sakha relationships with the landscape, and their corollary assumptions about art intersecting with life. The transfer of meanings from traditional culture into cinema has become the transition from interiorization to exteriorization, an answering word coming from the inside, signaling a new possibility for artistic vision—Sakha cinema.
As the following sections show, Don’t decipher love and Ajyy Uola also demonstrate both a specific interrelation with the land, and an ambiguous distinction between representation and reality—as their directors acknowledge Sakha cinema to be a distinct phenomenon within global cinema.
Don’t decipher love: soul, love and creativity in the land
Don’t decipher love (2016) emerged out of Lukachevskii’s longstanding friendship with the singer Pavel Semenov, brother to the film’s subject, Stepan Semenov. Stepan Semenov rose to fame as the lead singer of the rock band Ai Tal, at the vanguard of the experimental music scene that became a key form of Sakha expression during the late 1980s and early 1990s (Peers, Ventsel and Sidorova 2020; Ventsel 2004, 2009). But his life was cut short: he died in March 1992 at the age of 28, ten days after the birth of his daughter, the singer Sajsary Kharitonova, or Sajsary Kuo. He had suffered constant ill health since a childhood accident. Pavel and the other Semenov siblings recounted their brother’s life story during Lukachevskii’s visit to their home village in Viliui region. Lukachevskii was fascinated by Semenov’s story, and in particular was caught by the words of one of Semenov’s songs—the song that eventually would provide the film’s title, Don’t decipher love, or Taajymang Taptaly in Sakha. He decided to make a documentary about Semenov that would focus on Kharitonova’s performance of this song. One of Semenov’s concert performances of this song has been put on YouTube: readers can find a link to this video in the Bibliography.
Lukachevskii himself was born in 1986, and studied at the College of Culture and Art in Yakutsk, and the Institute of Film and Television in Saint Petersburg. He is known in Sakha (Yakutia) as the author of Sakha art-house film. His films are distinguished by their particular style, in which social themes are interweaved organically with mystical, mythic or folkloric motifs. His films are also known for their reflective atmosphere, created by long, slow shots that absorb the viewer. These films were some of the first that were shown outside Sakha (Yakutia). They presented Sakha cinema as a new and distinct phenomenon at festivals in Russia, and the wider world; some of them have won Russian and international awards. For example, in 2014 the film White Day (2013; Ürüng Kün in Sakha, Belyi Den’ in Russian) was named “The Best Dramatic Feature” at the imagineNATIVE festival in Toronto, Canada.
As Lukachevskii acknowledged to us, there is always something mysterious in his films. He said:
I’m not interested in recounting stories without a second parallel world. Something that might be reality has to be present—something unseen, but present. You can’t explain it in words. I call this the film’s soul; the film’s form. Once I tried to make a film in the American way, according to the rules … in which everything had been thought through and was clear. But the film didn’t work, because there wasn’t a soul, or form. … This is why I definitely have to find that form, that soul, that second, parallel, unseen soul, before I make the film. If I find it, then I’ll work very successfully—I’ll win the lottery, I’ll be able to persuade people. … The film will become alive, and inspired, and its character will appear. … They say that when a child is born, first of all the soul appears—the kut. … They say that the ije-kut [mother-soul] is your genes. Then the salgyn-kut [air-soul] appears—that’s the soul. Then the buor-kut [earth-soul] comes—and that’s the physical body. Perhaps a film is born in the same way as a child.
Sakha people told ethnographers about the three kut during the nineteenth century; Sakha activists were to recover these accounts during the post-Soviet revitalization of Sakha culture (e.g. Sieroszewski 1993, Pekarskii 2008, Kulakovskii 1979, 59-60, Utkin 1994, Afanas’ev-Teris 2012). Some contend that this tri-partite soul elucidates an important Sakha philosophy, which links people to the earth in a universal harmony: life’s first elements (e.g. earth, air) are brought together to make a person, and then at this person’s death they return to their initial state (cf. Utkin 1994, 15). Hence Lukachevskii’s remarks about the essential soul in his films refer to what he identifies as a uniquely Sakha influence on his work. This influence distinguishes his films from those made in Hollywood or central Russia, as his mention of the “American way” demonstrates. He said:
Cinema is simply telling a story. The same story will be told in different ways by an English person, a Sakha person, or a Japanese person. It seems to me that the language of film lies in this; this is what we are trying to search for. The most important thing is not to lose your language, your worldview, your tempo and rhythm.
Lukachevskii also connected the mystery within Sakha cinema with shamanism—another important aspect of the Sakha people’s heritage—as he emphasized his assertion that Sakha films cannot entirely be explained in words:
It’s always difficult for me to answer viewers, who want to find the logic. … Cinema isn’t always logical. It can’t always be put into words. It’s no accident that there’s a little shamanism in Sakha cinema [shamanizm, in Russian]—it’s a little inexplicable. It’s very difficult to explain, and probably [this explanation] isn’t necessary.
The Russian word “shamanism” (shamanizm) has a complex genealogy and meaning. There is no direct translation of this term into Sakha, because it was first used by pre-Soviet European ethnographers to categorize the various forms of expression Sakha people used to negotiate their relationships with a sentient landscape (Nikanorova 2019, Harris 2017, Ferguson 2019, Crate 2006, Balzer 1997). Lukachevskii’s use of the word demonstrates the Sakha people’s reappropriation of the term over the post-Soviet period. Revivalist activists have attempted to transform its Soviet-era associations with primitive superstition (cf. Nikanorova 2019), so that this aspect of the Sakha people’s tradition can become a source of pride (cf. Egorova 2007). The Sakha term preferred by some for this tradition is Sakha iteghele, or Sakha faith (cf. Afanas’ev-Teris 2012); Lukachevskii could have used the Russian translation of this term (Iakutskaia religiia), rather than shamanizm. Nowadays “shamanizm” generally refers to experiences, activities and skills that manifest the mysterious power of a personal and emotional engagement with a sentient landscape, and its non-human inhabitants. “Shamans,” or rather ojuun or udaghan in Sakha, have for centuries been known to have enigmatic capacities for altering the course of events, bestowed on them through their close interaction with non-human beings in the natural world (e.g. Sieroszewski 1993; Ksenofontov 1992).
This personal relationship with a living landscape is seen by many in Sakha (Yakutia) as an ancient insight, which is also an integral part of the Sakha people’s culture. Lukachevskii indicated that this insight is a powerful aspect of Sakha cinema’s attraction:
Archaeologists have proved that the Sakha people is an ancient people … for some reason preserved in the north. … Faith itself for us is to see yourself as a part of nature, or even less. …In Sakha cinema there is exactly this worldview, which everyone had before religion. … It seems to me that these sources are the most important. This is why viewers feel that they are present in Sakha cinema. … This is found in the soul. This is why they are interested. They probably see something sub-conscious, that was forgotten a long time ago. A long-forgotten truth.
Lukachevskii, then, was telling us that the mysterious soul or parallel reality in his films manifests a distinctive and emotional relationship with the land among Sakha people, which has its roots in an ancient Sakha tradition. He suggested that this relationship is the source of his creativity when he said,
I thought then that when you create, when you are in some kind of a creative search, when you film and improvise, you are in some kind of a different wave. Some kind of aura opens up, and you become lucky and perceptive. I thought that that itself is nature [priroda, in Russian]—the nature of a creator, the nature of creativity. Because new and special possibilities of some kind open up in you. … You don’t think up things artificially yourself, but they are reflected themselves inside, from the air, the heart, from love.
Later he said, “[creativity] is a little bit shamanic—you open up, you have an aura, and higher capacities appear.” His words echo the interaction described by Sakha musicians, poets and speakers of prayers (algyschyt) past and present, who receive beautiful words from creative beings in the land (the ajyy) (Sieroszewski 1993, Harris 2017, Ferguson 2019). As this suggests, much of the practice that constitutes Sakha iteghele is based on the principle that an open and loving relationship with the landscape enables it to share its gifts in return, generating luck, health, and inspiration. This flow of love, inspiration and luck that entangles Sakha people with their land is contrasted with accounts of contemporary Russian or Western attempts to raise human beings above nature through systemized attempts to understand it. As Lukachevskii told us, “In the contemporary world religion exists. It consists of laws thought up by people … where the person is like a god, he is the most important in the world.”
And in fact the song Don’t decipher love calls its listeners to sustain an ancient, sacred and fragile love through song. The first verse warns against subjecting this love to logical analysis: “Don’t decipher love/[love] isn’t a riddle/don’t let the roots wither/don’t lock up your heart” (Taajymang taptaly/Taabyryn buolbatakh/Kuurdumang silihin/Süüreenin khaajymang). The following verses consist of a conversation between the singer and his “yearning soul” (min iejer duuham), in which the singer assures the soul that he is singing out this unquenchable, sacred love—as he describes in the chorus, which is the epigraph to this article. These words, written by someone who was fatally ill, echo a Sakha understanding that the loving, divine creator is immanent within the natural world (cf. Afanas’ev-Teris 2012)—and, further, that song embodies this immanent love, enmeshing the singer into the eternal flow of creation.
The song’s chorus does indeed invoke the landscape in its reference to the light of dawn. The film Don’t decipher love implies that Semenov had a close, loving relationship to the landscape of Viliui, for example by long, reflective shots of an actor playing Semenov lying in a boat on the river, in a summer sunset. Lukachevskii told us that people in Viliui relate to their land as they would to a living person—and in fact the Semenov family deliberately took Lukachevskii and the film crew out for recreational trips in the landscape, so that they would develop their connection to the land. It seems, then, that Semenov was singing about his experience of this ancient, loving relationship with the land in his song, demonstrating its inspiring, creative power as he contrasted this creativity with the destructive urge to “decipher” love.
Lukachevskii felt as if he had heard the words of Don’t decipher love before—perhaps even “in a past life.” These words raised certain images in his head—a blue sky, and tall trees—and he felt he should explore them. He might say that he had found the film’s “form,” or “soul.” He structured the documentary’s narrative around the relationship between Kharitonova, and the father she never met. The film follows Kharitonova as she prepares to sing Don’t decipher love on stage, encountering numerous people who tell her about her father and his life as she does so. The “mystery” or “parallel reality” that is so integral to Lukachevskii’s work is expressed most obviously in Semenov’s constant presence in his daughter’s life. For example, Semenov suggests to Kharitonova that she sings Don’t decipher love while she is asleep. Their subtle interaction culminates in her successful performance of the song at the end of the film: she finally touches her father’s hand as she sings onstage. In this sequence the visual dimension of the film—which itself cites Michelangelo’s fresco, The Creation of Adam—complements its sonic dimension, generating a model of parallel worlds where love, incarnated in song, is victorious over time, space and death. Thus the documentary film becomes a dialogue between people, generations, cultures, and epochs.
The film Don’t decipher love, the story of its making, and its impact all tend to explode any distinctions between fact and fiction—and in fact any attempt to capture the film through explaining or “deciphering” it. It shows Semenov’s family and fellow band members recounting their memories, interweaving these accounts with the remaining footage of Semenov’s performances, and silent sequences in which actors play Semenov and his wife. Meanwhile the process of making this film has had a significant impact on Lukachevskii, and Semenov’s family. Kharitonova’s singing career has taken on a new direction, while Semenov’s brothers have experienced an easing of their own grief and trauma. The film was not just another project for Lukachevskii and the Semenovs. It was a ceremonial parting for some—and for the heroine it was a new initiation as a singer, through her renewed and rediscovered connection with her father.
Lukachevskii felt that Semenov was helping him make the film; hence, the production has been successful. The depiction of Semenov’s shadowy presence in the background of his daughter’s life echoes Lukachevskii’s experience of his benevolent action in the film’s production. Lukachevskii’s visit to the Semenovs in Viliui had engaged him with Semenov’s life, work, and inspiration—an inspiration with its roots in the Sakha people’s long experience of a loving, sentient landscape. This engagement had enabled him to identify the “soul” of Don’t decipher love, as he explained to us, and as he did so both to express this loving intersection between people and land in his film, and to foster its creative and benevolent effects in the wider world.
Ajyy Uola: falcons, inspiration and music
The film Ajyy Uola has a very different genesis and content from Don’t decipher love. Eduard Novikov, its director, undertook its creation as a commercial artistic project, proposed by the producer Marianna Skrybykina. It presents a narrative based on the life story of the singer Aleksandr Samsonov, also known in Sakha as Ajyy Uola (the Ajyy’s boy or son), rather than a close exploration of Samsonov’s life and heritage: this film is not a documentary, as Novikov made clear. All of the characters are played by actors; some of these characters are fictitious. Samsonov’s music was fun, easy pop, in contrast to Semenov’s experimental sound. However the traditional Sakha entanglement with a sentient, loving and creative landscape is visible in both the film and its history—along with the manifestation of this entanglement through artistic expression, and particularly in music.
Novikov himself is of a slightly earlier generation than Lukachevskii. He was born in 1971, and regards himself as a “Soviet” person, whose formative years just preceded the unraveling of the Soviet state. He completed his course at the Saint Petersburg Institute of Cinema and Television in 2001. He is a member of the Russian Council of Film-Makers, and his films have won national and international awards, like Lukachevskii’s; for example, the film Lord Eagle (Tojon Kyyl; Russian title: Tsar Ptitsa, Eduard Novikov, 2018) has won nine awards, including “Best Film” at the Asian World Film Festival. As he explained to us, he had a typical atheist Soviet upbringing—however he remembers having a faint belief in something as a child. He confirmed that Sakha people living in villages had a deep respect for nature during the Soviet Union, despite the influence of their atheist state. However, he noted that seventy years of state-sponsored atheism have had a profound effect on religiosity. It takes time for a person to move beyond the atheism of their upbringing: “you need to come to [faith, whether Christian or traditional Sakha] with some preparation.” He is exploring both Russian Orthodox Christianity and the faith of his ancestors, and might eventually make a film about the Sakha epic tradition, the olonkho—although “[one] needs to grow towards it spiritually.”
Novikov’s comments on his filmmaking process were much more concise than Lukachevskii’s, as was his account of his decision to accept Skrybykina’s proposal and make Ajyy Uola. He explained that he had never been a special fan of Samsonov’s music: “I can’t say that I had dreamed to make this film from childhood.” Instead, he was happy to accept a project, and to work with the scriptwriter Maria Nakhodkina. The film’s team made strenuous efforts to understand Samsonov and his life—and in fact Skrybykina’s very first step was to consult Samsonov’s mother, after conceiving of the film (Anon. 2014; see also Tarasov 2018). They needed an attractive narrative, if the film was going to be commercially successful—and the stories in Samsonov’s life were tragically few, since he was only 20 when he died. He suffered from a rare vascular and kidney condition; the medical facilities of the time were unable to help him. But he managed to become an acclaimed singer despite his illness and lack of formal musical education, producing cheerful, poppy songs that have since become popular classics. One example is Belekhtee, or “Give”; a link to a recording of this song can be found in the Bibliography. Nowadays people say that his songs were a source of light and good cheer during the chaos and criminality of the early 1990s. The widespread memory of this criminality provided Novikov and Nakhodkina with their narrative: they introduced the jealous singer Elvira and her gangster boyfriend into Samsonov’s life, along with a love interest, Sardaana. Thus Novikov related to us the professional decisions that had generated Ajyy Uola, rather than his experience of mystery.
Novikov sees himself as a member of a globalized profession—and he constantly develops his craft, through master classes and watching the experience of others. However he also noted the variations between the films made in Hollywood, Moscow and Sakha (Yakutia):
…if you take Moscow [cinema], then they try more to copy Hollywood. Everything is very exact with them: everything goes according to the script … there’s a kind of scheme, and they try to copy it. … The viewer sees that. This is why it turns out that the film is ours, but not ours. Sakha cinema also produces commercial films, but they come out differently … It’s because the language is different, and the culture is different.
Hence, Novikov like Lukachevskii identifies Sakha cinema as a specifically Sakha version of a global phenomenon. He sees Sakha cinema as an important means of introducing Sakha heritage to the wider world: “It’s necessary to make our history comprehensible both to Sakha people, and to other people throughout the world—so that it is interesting to them, and understandable.” He suggested that Sakha cinema should remain true to the Sakha people’s particular heritage and experience: “We think differently here. Probably that’s why [Sakha film] is interesting. If you don’t lie to yourself, if you believe in your idea and try to take it to its finish—that itself is Sakha cinema, probably. Even something mysterious [misticheskii, in Russian] happens. We believe it because of that.”
Further, Novikov’s avowal of his professional pragmatism did not prevent him from pointing out an influence on Sakha film from the Sakha people’s traditional relationship with the landscape:
I came to the understanding that our beliefs—Sakha, pagan—are more connected to nature [priroda in Russian]. We have the harsh winter, and the cold, and that’s why everything here is connected to [nature]. Here if you go against nature, it’s the end of you. This is why you need to know about the culture your ancestors left you. … We don’t want to go against nature. And from this [arises] an ecological theme: it’s necessary to conserve nature: if you do something too bad to nature, then it’ll be bad for you. And not only for you, for humanity in general. [People want to watch Sakha cinema] because there is a special sense of nature—[people] sense the defense of nature. And ecology is important now.
In fact, the creative power of a responsive environment can be seen in both Ajyy Uola’s narrative, and the chain of events that generated this narrative, as Novikov recounted. Ajyy Uola’s plot is constructed around Samsonov’s struggle to perform and to love—despite his illness, and the attempts of Elvira and her criminal associates to suppress his music. This struggle is shown symbolically by Samsonov’s release of a bird—specifically, a falcon—which had become caught in a net. The first shots of the film show Samsonov discovering the falcon in the dark attic of his parents’ house. The film periodically returns to the falcon, as it struggles with the net—and the final sequences show Samsonov releasing the falcon into the sky, just before cutting back to Samsonov stepping on stage for his first solo concert, and raising his arms to greet his audience. The film links song to the flight of a bird through this metaphor, repeating the association between creativity, and the natural world.
This bird should have been a skylark, according to Novikov’s original intention; the skylark has many associations in Sakha culture. However, Novikov and his crew found it impossible to catch a skylark to use in the film. Time was running out, and eventually they asked a local zoo to provide a bird—and received a falcon, instead of a skylark. The film crew were extremely surprised to see this falcon, for two reasons. Firstly, because they had noticed falcons appearing to follow them as they worked on the film: a falcon would even sit outside the window of the room in Yakutsk where they planned the film (Anon. 2014). Secondly, Novikov found that Samsonov had constantly drawn falcons in his notebooks, as he explained to us. Gavril Menkiarov, the actor who played Samsonov, noted that Samsonov would constantly raise his arms like an eagle’s wings during his performances, as he does at the end of the film—and that the eagle is traditionally the totem of Khangalass region, Samsonov’s home region (Anon. 2014). It seems that the zoo’s donation of this falcon was not a chance event.
As Novikov explained, “of course, the bird is a symbol of creativity. [Samsonov] releases his creativity free, to the people. And people listen to [his music] to this day; they organize concerts to his memory, and he has his fans. This is probably related to nature [priroda, in Russian]. And the falcon gave us this present. It was a very interesting coincidence: we were surprised.” He went on to admit that there had been “mystery” in the making of Ajyy Uola, and in fact in the making of other films, notably Lord Eagle. He sensed that Samsonov himself was involved in the film, as Semenov was in the making of Don’t decipher love: “There even was this feeling that [Samsonov] was helping—he was giving us advice. That’s how it probably was.”
Other sequences in Ajyy Uola show Samsonov to have had a mysterious and profound emotional connection to the land, in common with Semenov in Don’t decipher love. He receives musical inspiration from looking at the stars, for example; at a moment of crisis, he seeks out a beautiful silver birch, near his parent’s village home. Novikov explained that the silver birch episode in fact was taken from Samsonov’s life story: the tree they filmed was precisely the tree that Samsonov would sit with when he was alive. The decision to use Samsonov’s stage name—the Ajyy’s boy—as the film’s title also references and thus emphasizes the understanding that Samsonov’s outstanding musical talent was a gift from the loving, creative entities in nature, the Ajyy. A film about Samsonov made in Khangalass describes him as a born singer, with gifts from the Ajii (Tarasov 2018). Fact and fiction is blurred in Ajyy Uola therefore, and especially in its depiction of Samsonov’s creativity. Samsonov himself—a village teenager with a fatal illness, who composed hit songs on his synthesizer at home—clearly corresponds to the traditional Sakha understanding of a singer inspired by a close relationship with a sentient, creative landscape.
Emotional and creative engagements with the land and its non-human inhabitants appear therefore in multiple aspects of Ajyy Uola, and its making—as is the case with Don’t decipher love. The film both depicts a creative engagement with the land in its portrayal of Samsonov—and bears the influence of the living landscape, in the form of the falcon and Samsonov’s silver birch. Ajyy Uola has also released Samsonov’s creativity further, by extending the popular interest in his music. Thus this film also manifests a continuing intersection between the land, inspiration and music in Yakutia, even if its director emphasizes the influence of his atheist Soviet background.
Conclusion: The Sakha people’s mission?
Don’t decipher love and Ajyy Uola are very different films, by very different directors. However both Lukachevskii and Novikov are conscious of a distinction between Sakha filmmaking, and mainstream Russian and Hollywood cinema. They both point to the Sakha people’s close connection to the natural world as one source of this distinction—and a reason behind the growing foreign interest in Sakha films. This connection involves a respect for the environment, in addition to an openness to the more mysterious signs and inspirations the land can provide. These signs can take the form of bird behavior, for example, or winning the lottery, or a sense that an unseen person is gently directing the film crew’s fortunes. A love and openness towards the natural world also enables a person to receive the creative gifts beings in the landscape can provide—such as beautiful songs, or films. This special connection with the land is demonstrated in the films themselves, in the process of their making, and in their consequences for the people who have engaged with them: these films are intertwined into reality, rather than representations of it. These two films indicate that Sakha (Yakutia)’s sentient landscape is an important element within Sakha cinematic expression—and that this intersection of people and land can afford cinema its own agency.
Novikov indicated that Sakha cinema in fact has a role in the wider world, as an intervention into the climate crisis. He suggested that expressing the relationship with the land is something of a mission for the Sakha people, at a time when human exploitation is destroying the environment:
I sometimes think that our people, our culture has some kind of mission; we need to say something. … Our attitude to nature is different. We aren’t kings of nature—we are subservient to it. … And right now industrialization and commerce is too much. When a kind of balance or harmony is disrupted, then it’s bad for the whole of humanity. … The Earth is small; we need to preserve the Earth. I feel that. The mission of our people, of our culture, is related to that.
Thus Novikov identifies the manifestation of the Sakha people’s creative and loving relationship with the land as a message the world needs to receive and understand, rather than merely an expression of the Sakha tradition. Lukachevskii echoed this sentiment when he said, “[the Sakha relationship with the land] needs to be written about. It seems to me that it holds the secret for the salvation of humanity in general. … We could destroy this world, this nature, and ourselves.”
Novikov and Lukachevskii are echoing a widespread perception that more attention needs to be paid to Indigenous knowledge of the environment, given the climate crisis wrought by Euro-American technologies and life ways. Don’t decipher love and Ajyy Uola might be seen to demonstrate one such Indigenous worldview in detail, along with its implications for the affordances of humans and non-humans, as these humans and non-humans intersect. They also demonstrate the impossibility of drawing a distinction between this “Indigenous worldview,” and everything else: they are indisputably also products of global cinematic culture. In doing so they point to the possibilities of manifesting an open engagement with an active natural world through contemporary cultural production. Thus Sakha cinema challenges common assumptions about the boundaries and agency of artistic expression, encouraging filmmakers, artists, musicians and academics to explore new ways of addressing the climate crisis in their work.
Notes
1] Our interview with Mikhail Lukachevskii was conducted by Zoom on February 22, 2022; our interview with Eduard Novikov was also conducted by Zoom on February 24, 2022. All of our quotations in the article come from these interviews. We are very grateful to Lukachevskii and Novikov for their generous help with this article.
2] The kinofikatsiia (which can be translated as “cinefication” in English) refers to the extension of access to cinema throughout the territory of Russia and the USSR, according to a movement impelled by the Bolsheviks in the 1920s. Later, this term came to refer to the diffusion and exhibition of films. (Editor’s note)
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Eleanor Peers and Gela Krasil’nikova © 2022