Ural Tansykbaev is one of the Russian avant-garde artists collected by Igor Savitsky, whose remarkable story is told in documentary screening at MoMA
THE DESERT OF FORBIDDEN ART (Amanda Pope & Tchavdar Georgiev, 2010)
MoMA Film
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Friday, February 18, 4:30, and Saturday, February 19, 5:00
Series runs February 16-28
Tickets: $10, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.desertofforbiddenart.com
While making a documentary about grass-roots political activism in the former Soviet Union, Amanda Pope and Tchavdar Georgiev learned of a remarkable museum in the middle of nowhere. Tucked away in the desert border town of Nukus in Uzbekistan is a monument built by one man’s fierce vision and refusal to give up, risking his freedom and security in the name of art. An archaeologist and wannabe painter, Igor Savitsky devoted his life to amassing a stunning collection of forbidden Soviet avant-garde art, primarily by little-known artists who were challenging the Fascist leadership on beautiful canvases loaded with social and historical relevance. Through interviews with surviving members of some of the artists’ families and friends of Savitsky’s, former New York Times Central Asia bureau chief Stephen Kinzer (the first Western journalist to write about the institution), art historians, longtime Savitsky Museum director Marinika Babanazarova, and others, supplemented by readings from Savitsky’s letters, Pope and Georgiev explore the power art can have in a repressed society as Savitsky, often getting funds from the very government that was banning the art he was collecting, put on public display works by such painters as Alexander Volkov, Kliment Redko, Victor Ufimtsev, Lyubov Popova, and Ivan Koudriachov from among the forty thousand pieces in the museum’s holdings (which now have passed the eighty-thousand mark). One of the most fascinating characters is Ural Tansykbaev, who was believed to have been collaborating with the Fascist government but is revealed to have had a subversive side as well. “I like to think of our museum as a keeper of the artists’ souls,” Savitsky is quoted as saying in the film. “Their works are the physical expression of a collective vision that could not be destroyed.” Sir Ben Kingsley supplies the voice of Savitsky, with Sally Field, Ed Asner, and Igor Paramonov providing voice-overs for various artists. As Pope and Georgiev note, the future of the Savitsky Collection is in jeopardy as it becomes more well known, more people look to profit from it, and Islamic fundamentalists seek to destroy it.
Winner of awards in Beijing, Palm Beach, and Russia and selected for festivals all around the world, THE DESERT OF FORBIDDEN ART will be screening February 18 and 19 as part of Documentary Fortnight 2011: MoMA’s International Festival of Nonfiction Film and Media, with Pope and Georgiev on hand to introduce each screening and participate in discussions afterward. (The film officially opens March 11 at Cinema Village.) The series also features such works as Turner Prize winner Gillian Wearing’s SELF MADE, in which nonprofessional actors train to play either themselves or their favorite fictional character in mini-movies; Huang Weikai’s DISORDER, a black-and-white portrait of Guangzhou composed of amateur footage; Marcus Lindeen’s REGRETTERS, which deals with sexual identity and transformation in Sweden; and Helena Trestíková’s KATKA, following the fourteen-year odyssey of a Czech junkie.