| Marie Jaoul de Poncheville: Nomadism Not So Ideal World, Anymore |
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| Monday, 23 June 2008 | ||||
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Q: Why TENGRI? A: TENGRI, because this is the divinity of the nomads and close to what I feel concerning the religions in general. I’m not a religious person and think religions do separate people and countries from each other, provoking, most of the time, wars and destruction. The concept of Tengri is very large and carries in itself a concept of emptiness, “sacred” and infinite. I think each man has in himself sparkles of divinity and should act knowing he is responsible for what he is doing on Earth. We, human beings, should be acting in full consciousness with total modesty. This is how I understand the title of my film. Tengrism (editor: in Kyrgyz tengirchilik) in Kyrgyzstan is a concept which is well known and it is going through a revival process nowadays. Q: Why have you made this film? A: I have always been very interested by all these regions of Central Asia travelling and filming for a few years. I had an opportunity to read about Kyrgyzstan, I also met the previous president Askar Akaev in Paris when he visited President Mitterrand who invited me to visit him in Kirghizstan and make a film there but it’s a few years later I decided to go and spend some time in Kirghizstan to know why the country was called ‘The pearl of Central Asia”! Then I made a few trips and started to meet people and to listen to them. I don’t know how it worked in my head but suddenly I started to write ideas and little by little it was evident I wanted to write a sript. I worked with Jean-François Goyet who is a fantastically cultured man and we worked together. He helped me to structure the story and the story started to flow as a big river too long for a film! So we contained the river and finally ended up with this film. Q: Is it something that you began writing and the characters started living by themselves? A: Well,we red a lot of stories about the Aral Sea. I was very much interested and also very moved by what had happened there. At the beginning of the writing I had two characters and I wanted people from this region playing parts of the stories I had listened to. I also shared life with nomads in jailoos - mountain pastures. I lived with nomads in Mongolia Nepal and Tibet, and I went to Kyrgyzstan and met people of the mountains. I also listened to a lot of stories from people I met in Bishkek. I am very sensitive and curious about the way the women are treated in the whole world. I was brought up with boys and I always wanted to be like my brothers, to be free, to study, to have same rights. When I started my life, I saw that often it was not the case. I had to fight much more to be respected in my work, for example, I realized very young that I was never getting for a same job the same salary than a man. This all would make me very angry. I don’t know any country who treat women equally to men ( even where they are in a better economical situation), may be in America after the feminist movement, but I am not sure either. That was a part of the concept I wanted to inscribe in the film. Talk about the fake power the men overtake on women without any questioning about it. Also I travelled a lot and I worked with the Doctors of the World (of Bernard Kouchner from Doctors Without Borders, now the Foreign Minister of France). I was very interested in the way people were managing to live in these countries abandoned by rich countries. Tibet, Mongolia, Siberia, India, Nepal and Africa. So I decided very long time ago that I would spend much time in these places and try to bring information from these countries to Europe and attention on this extreme human richness we scarcely know. In fact all my films talk about these topics : when there is compassion between men and women, respect for children and old persons, respect for animals, respect of the nature, then, you can talk about love. In Mongolia, Tibet and Siberia I was very touched by the way we were always warmly accepted. I wanted to talk about this extraordinary hospitality too. But the film TENGRI is a little bit dark compared to my earlier films from the region. I think this is because I wanted for a long time to focus on the relationship between men and women . The jailoo which I am showing in my film is not a very happy place but it’s a film and my way of expressing myself. Q: For me jailoo has been always an idealistic space, something contrary to the city, very beautiful and human. Women are very patient, diplomatic and loving, men are strong, respectful and responsible. A: May be in your dreams... In my film, women are not very happy there, and men are cruel. This is also a film. This is a fiction. Making a movie is an artistic and personal act whose should be universally moving . I wanted to talk about injustice and fake power. I always thought that respect, equality and fairness between human beings was a good aim to fight for. Even in France the situation between men and women is far from equality. I am very interested by how and why it’s still so rough . The relationship between men and women are not the way they should be… Q: Still there is a common aggremment that in nomadic cultures of Inner Asia, women are strong and there is more equality with men than in other regions in neighbourhood. A: I don’t think so. I think women are often treated with more cruelty in places where religion took a heavy power. Religion is on the side of men, not on the side of women. Women are there to give birth and take care of children, cook, do all the hard work. But she knows what is life, she is generous, fundamentally she does not care about power. Q: Which money do you mean? A: There is a character in my film, the man who is paid a lot of money by a group of religious extremists. They send him to make war. This destroys this man’s life forever. When he comes back to his normal life in the jaïloo during the summer, he cannot make it. He cannot love his wife, he cannot fulfil her desires, he is not happy anymore and becomes violent. Q: You say that you were touched by the Aral Sea catastroph and its tragic consequences. You also raise a very important question for the region: migration. Did you meet specific people, or it is more a general story? A: I heard a lot of stories from Kaakh and Kyrgyz people. There are also people who were in Central Asia, so they bring these stories out. With my writing partner Jean-Francois Goyet we had read more than 300 books about migrants and issues related to them. Where do they go, how are they are treated in different countries, in Europe, for example? They are not treated well at all, there is nothing which brings us some hope. I wanted to talk about it. I think it is absolutely horrible how rich nations treat the people who arrive in their countries, because they need these people for doing work themselves don’t want to do and after that, when they don’t need them anymore, they simply throw them out. We are monsters and do not know how to share. Occidental people are such egoists… Q: In your Director’s statement for TENGRI you ask where do all the people, who come from the East and for whom Europe have no place, return to. But your ancestors did find the place in Europe, didn’t they? A: Oh! It happened a very long time ago. Do you want to hear the story of my grandfather? Q: Yes, if possible. A: Those were stories, but my grandfather would tell us: “We come from the East, from what is Russia now”. He told me beautiful stories, and I dreamt about that world during my childhood. Q: How much of that was true? A: I don’t know, and I never knew. But he had a lot of beautiful stories which gave me the desire to travel and to see by myself the people he was talking about . Q: But there was the ring, wasn’t it? A: Yes, there was a ring. There was a cote of arm of his family on it. He was from an old family from Britany. He would tell me: ”On my ring I have seven Mongol squares, that shows that my ancestors were big chiefs in Mongolia”. Maybe he was inventing the stories but on his ring the Mongol squares were true and the mysterious signs were engraved on this ring for centuries! He was transmiting me stories that were kept alive throughout centuries and generations. And it reached me, I was the last one to receive these stories and it was fascinating for me, then a little girl. Q: You travelled to Mongolia and other parts of the Inner Asia. Did you feel this connection through centuries? A: Yes, I did. Q: What was that? A: Once in Tibet I stopped at the bottom of a big mountain which was called Minyak Kongar, this is the name of my grandfather. Suddenly I felt my heart beating strong. I walked a bit and saw a little house. I went inside. There was a monk sitting there all alone in this empty little house. I sat in front of him. There was a ray of sun falling on him. It was absolutely beautiful. I started crying while sitting in front of him. We could not talk because we did not speak the same language. But it was as if I was with my grandfather there. It was like going back to my country after centuries. I was somewhere where my grandfather’s family was coming from. It was a very strange and a very strong encounter. Q: And what happened to your relationship with Tibet? You have been arrested and escaped… A: My love and compassion for Tibetan people are still very intense. Being arrested in Chengdu was not a big deal. I stayed 3 months in the last floor of the a hotel. I was kept by security officers and followed everywhere I was going. Finally I escaped with the sound-tapes from my future film in my pocket. At night the American council opened my door with a pass and we ran. He sent me to Beijin. Later I came back after everything was settled and we obtained a permission to get my film out of China. Q: In Kyrgyzstan, what was your experience with local colleagues? A: I worked with some 80 Kyrgyz persons, and it was the most beautiful experience in terms of energy and generosity. Also in terms of competence, they were really great actors. That was fantastic. And I am also happy, because we made some test screenings for public and we got very strong and positive reactions Q: Asangul Baigaziev, a Kyrgyz graphic who is in Paris now for an art residency, told me that he cried a lot at the test screening. A: Yes, he cried a lot, he thanked me. “I don’t know how you managed, but it is a portrait of our country today. It is beautiful, it is so strong, very human”, he said. He was very moved indeed. And he gave me a beautiful painting… Q: It is a big compliment for your film, isn’t it? A: Yes…. The best… Interview by Janyl Jusubjan, Paris, June 21, 2008
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