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37 Uses for a Dead Sheep

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by Kerry McLeod

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37 Uses for a Dead Sheep in the DFGdocs Directory.
When director Ben Hopkins set out to make a film about a semi-nomadic tribe now living in Turkey, he eschewed the traditional models of ethnographic filmmaking in favour of a collaborative project with members of the tribe, reconstructing their turbulent recent history. He has described it as a “comic ethnographic film”, which goes some way to describing it.

This clever, funny film draws together several documentary styles, and a fair few from the wider wealth of cinema besides. Nor does the story get lost in the telling: the journey of the Pamir Kirghiz tribe in the last 100 years is a compelling one, and encompasses the major histories of the twentieth century.

The story begins at the creation of Afghanistan by British and Russian powers, which neatly divided into three regions the homeland of the Pamir Kurghiz – a tribe living in the Pamir mountain range, which encompasses the borders of modern-day Tajikstan, China and Afghanistan. The history of this tribe that unfolds echoes the wider world history of the twentieth century. Hounded from the Russian Pamir by the Communist Soviets, they escape to the Chinese Pamir for a brief period of prosperity before China falls to Mao Tse Tung and they must move again, this time to the remote and inhospitable Afghan Pamir region. Their time here is difficult: infant mortality reaches 50% and many of the tribe become addicted to Opium, yet the tribe still manages to flourish – until Afghanistan falls to the Soviets. With no options to the north, east or west, the tribe has to move to Pakistan, but the heat takes its toll on a people used to high altitudes and the tribe’s leader, the fabled Haji Rahman Qul, seeks a more suitable home, eventually receiving invitations from Turkey and Alaska in one week. The tribe choose Turkey, and twenty-five years later are still there – but much has changed.
All this is shown through dramatised sequences, styled in parts to appear as archive footage, with members of the tribe playing their own ancestors and one of Haji Rahman Qul’s sons coming on board as a co-director (another of Qul’s sons plays his father in the dramatisations). The first time I saw this film in fact, I arrived late, missing the part where Hopkins’ voiceover describes how he was to approach his topic, and so for a few disoriented moments thought this actually was archive footage. The stories are based almost entirely on the reminiscences of the older members of the tribe and reflect the consequent tensions between truth and memory by borrowing heavily from various cinematic styles. For instance, the sequences from the tribe’s fight against the Soviet army play like something from Soviet cinema; aged, flickering black and white, with a pounding, portentous score worthy of a restored Eisenstein classic.

The film is deeply layered, from the ‘straight’ documentary styles of interviews and observational sequences, as members of the tribe recount their experiences, to the dramatisations, and to the behind-the-scenes style that links the two, reminding us constantly that what we watching is a construction. If the film suffers, it is from the drop in pace that occurs when the playfulness ends, such as the sequence at the end that looks to the future in a simple doc-style that feels slightly flat after watching such a vibrant and irreverent film.

However, it doesn’t detract from the fact that this is a fresh and welcome approach to documentary, and an immensely watchable and moving film. Special praise has to be reserved for Gary Clarke’s photography – exceptional across several formats – and Marco van Welzen’s playful and inventive editing. It’s already won several prizes across the world, and it would be no surprise if it wins more.
Dir: Ben Hopkins (with Ekber Kutlu)
UK 2006, 87 mins
Cast: Arif Kutlu, Alpaslan Kutlu, Süleyman Atanìsev, Ìsmaìl Atìlgan, Sereban Aslan, Aysun Uçar, Esat Tanrìverdì, Sabur Vatan and actors of the Van State Theatre

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