Assembling Siberia Through Film

This website addresses the representation of Sakha people in the Time article "Why the Film Industry Is Thriving in the Russian Wilderness." I found this article while searching for information about Sakhawood, the film industry of the Sakha Republic. Sakha films are receiving mainstream attention lately as they have been shown to positive reception in international film festivals.

The Republic of Sakha, also known as Yakutia, is an officially recognized republic of the Russian Federation located in the Russian Far East. It is home to roughly one million people, approximately half of whom are indigenous Sakha. As a primary mode of subsistence, most Sakha people have traditionally raised horses, cattle, and reindeer. Sakha migration from rural areas into cities, especially the capital of the Republic, Yakutsk, has increased dramatically since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Yakutsk in winter by Alexey Vasilyev

Journalistic accounts and reviews are likely to be the first engagement that Americans have with Sakha films as they are not always found in English online. Therefore, the way that Suyin Haynes and Madeline Roache construct a narrative about Sakha film in this article, and which details they neglect, have a significant impact on a general audience's perception of the industry and the people involved in it.

Haynes and Roache emphasize the vastness and coldness of the Republic of Sakha to contrast the reader's expectation of where a burgeoning film industry ought to be. Days on set are long and cruel as projects operate in freezing weather on a fraction of a budget. Profound, artistic films are produced under these unlikely circumstances, they state, incorporating dreamlike storylines based upon Sakha folklore. But why is the film industry booming now, and what is the significance of urban Sakha directors depicting rituals and customs they may have never participated in themselves?

Online review of Sakha film Yt

Film History

The Sakha film tradition is sometimes considered to have stemmed from the well-established Soviet film tradition. Stepan Burnashev, a Sakha film director, says in the Time article that "'we didn't make films in Yakutia'" in his childhood, but the dissolution of the Soviet Union finally "opened a new world of cinema to Yakutia." Sakha film historians have challenged this conception, though; Ivan Zharaev asserts that 1911 is the date that film arrived in the Republic of Sakha, which establishes Sakha film as developing within a separate tradition. While the production of Sakha films was a state project under the Soviet government, independent filmmakers are celebrated in Zharaev's history. They worked alongside professionals, participated in union meetings, and were occasionally in charge of filming important events, such as meetings with delegates. There is a fear that these films will be forgotten as contemporary Sakha cinema achieves greater popularity. Affirming that the Sakha film industry has developed concurrently with rather than inseparably from Soviet cinema is a means of highlighting sovereignty and distinct national creativity.

Yakut Language

This article states that most Sakha films are shot in Yakut, the language traditionally spoken by ethnic Sakha people, but neglects to include that this was not always the case. When demographics shifted so that most people in the Republic of Sakha spoke Russian, the government once deemed it unnecessary to produce or dub films in Yakut. The insistence to not only shoot films in Yakut, but create subtitles and dubbing in Yakut for Russian-language and foreign films is recent. The deliberate decision to include Yakut is a means of strengthening language use within the Republic as well as including the language in an international film canon.

Heritage

During the colonial period, European Russians sought to categorize indigenous peoples in different ways, such as by perceived biological traits or revolutionary potential. As the subjects of these projects, Sakha ways of life and notions of self were altered. Not everything depicted in Sakha films is practiced by modern descendents of historical Sakha people; directors and audiences are aware of this. Logos used by Sakha film companies often depict artwork from the pre-contact past, and shots in films tend to linger on traditional tools, structures, and gestures. While Soviet films have depicted Siberia as void of indigenous people, Sakha films can depict Yakutsk as filled entirely with Sakha people and Yakut-speakers. Through film, traditions can be preserved throughout time in spite of historical efforts to stamp them out. These implicit goals of nation-building are excluded from Haynes and Roache's article in favor of illuminating a hope for Yakut cinema to spread throughout the world solely because it is novel and beautiful.

Shooting a scene from Sakha film The Old Beyberikeen by Alexey Vasilyev