Reviews: Soviet silent Yat Kha accompanies London screening of Soviet classic "Storm over Asia" [30-10-2001]  |  by Alex Kan, BBC Russian Services, London On July 20, National Film Theatre in London was a site of a unique event: one and only screening of classic Soviet silent film Storm Over Asia with Yat-Kha playing live. In 1927 34-year old Vsevolod Pudovkin had just completed shooting his masterpiece Mother, based on Maxim Gorky's novel. While looking for a subject for a new film he came across a recently published novel by now totally forgotten writer Novbokshenov about events of Civil war in Tuva and Mongolia. An illiterate hunter fights the Whites and the British until he is captured and sent by merciless British invaders to be shot. In his amulet the British find an old insignia that proves that he's a direct descendant of Jengis Khan. They find him deeply wounded but alive and strive to turn him into a puppet ruler. Until he rebels Pudovkin asked Osip Brik, the husband of Lilya Brik, Mayakovsky's lover (rumour had it that the trio were in an amorous menage a trois) to write the script. In two weeks the short script ­ 20 pages only ­ was ready and Pudovkin, along with his cameraman Anatoly Golovnya and skeleton crew set off to Tuva to shoot the film. The premiere screening of Potomok Chingiz Khana ­ The Descendant of Jengis Khan - was held in Moscow on November 28, 1928. Hard to believe, but since then the film had never been shown in its full 140 minutes until the NFT screening. A version released for public screening in the USSR in the late 1940s was sonorised and only 90 minutes: most of especially valuable ethnographic scenes were cut out and the film looked more or less a trite Soviet propaganda flick. Ironically, it was not only Stalin's censors who excelled in ideological mutilation of the classic film. In the late 1920 the Iron Curtain had not yet been tightly shut and in 1930 the film made it to London where it was shown under the title Storm Over Asia. "From start to finish, Storm Over Asia is Bolshevik Propaganda. The morning we spent watching that film was wastedŠ" wrote an angered Conservative MP in the Times. British Board of Film Censors insisted on cutting out all the scenes relating to the British troops in Mongolia and Tuva. "We ended having two censored version", - says Marek Pytel of Reality Film, a London based small company which produced the NFT screening. "Fortunately each had different scenes cut out. We put them together, found more footage in American film archives and with the help John Paul Getty Conservation Centre in the UK and Film Preservation Associates in the USA could bring our version closest in length, images and ideas to Pudovkin's original. A fanatic film enthusiast, Pytel first saw Storm Over Asia along with other Soviet silent classics in his student years and has since become tireless promoter of these films. His Reality Film already organised special screening of the works of FEKS ­ Eccentric Film Studios of Grigory Kosintsev and Leonid Trauberg. When Pytel heard of Yat Kha, a group that brings together Tuvan throat singing, free improvisation and punk, he immediately set off to Tuva with a copy of the film seeking their cooperation for creating a soundtrack. He never regretted the choice. "Yat Kha are about the only musicians in the world capable of fully capturing this film and translating its images into music, that would be understandable to Western audiences", says Pytel. After the London screening the film along with Yat Kha is going on a tour of Europe and the US. Screenings in Tuva or anywhere in Russia so far remain unfortunately only in distant planning. Yat Kha made their debut at Voices of Asia festival in Almaaty in 1991. Brian Eno who was there as a member of the jury, was so impressed by their powerful performance that he invented a "Special Prize" for the band. Their singer and leader Albert Kuvezin before Yat Kha played and sang with Huun Huur Tu. He, however, felt somewhat limited in the strictly authentic boundaries of the now world renown group and went on his own to invent his Enisey Punk style. "If there are anywhere Jengis Khan's descendants, three of them are in our band", says Kuvezin referring to the fact that three if the five band members are ethnic Tuvans and direct descendants if not of the great military leader, but at least of his warriors. The music the band plays for the film is, according to Kuvezin, mostly "spontaneously improvised". "There are of course lots of musical quotations: from old folklore, Russian and Soviet songs. This is all part of our history", says Kuvezin. Yat-Kha were best where the film action centered around nature and live of ordinary Tuvans and Mongols and worst when they tried to provide musical background to British headquarters with their imitatioon of Western lavish lifestyle. If the quotes from familiar Russian and Soviet songs were quite justified, I was at least perplexed to suddenly hear the House of the Rising Sun in a 1928 Soviet film about the events of 1918 Civil war in Mongolia and Tuva.
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