CENGİZ AYTMATOV

  "ÖMÜR UZAR SONSUZ OLUR"

First Teacher

(1965) USSR

Directed by Andrei Konchalovskii

Written by Chingiz Aitmatov, Boris Dobrodeev, and Andrei Konchalovskii, based on a story by Chingiz Aitmatov. Cinematography by Georgii Rerberg. Art direction by Mikhail Romadin. With Natal'ia Arinbasarova, Bolot Beishenaliev, Darkul' Kuiukova, Idris Nogaibaev, Kasym Zharkinbaev, and Sovetbek Dzhumadylov.

In Russian with English subtitles

First Teacher was Andrei Konchalovskii's diploma-film, the film with which the young director completed his studies at the All-Union State Filmmaking Institute in Moscow. He chose a historical subject for his film. The end of the civil war in the early 1920s gave the new regime the opportunity to spread its ideology throughout its vast territory, and the fervent members of the Communist Party undertook this task with missionary zeal. Diuishen, The First Teacher to arrive in a small Kirghiz village has the daunting task of bringing both knowledge and belief in the revolution to a world that is not at all prepared for change.
It is fitting that this film can be shown in the context of the Pittsburgh Film Symposium Evropsk, Russia: Out of European Order. For Diushen's mission is more than a mission of political ideology. It is a reenactment of the oft-repeated drama of empire as enlightenment. Russia liberates the Kirghiz people by bringing knowledge and technology, and thus binds them to a new cultural and political center. As Russia reexamines it's national identity in the post-Soviet age, it is important to recall that this search is neither new, nor have the basic parameters changed over the past several decades. Or the past several centuries.