Guardian of the Mongolian horses
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Guardian of the Mongolian horses |
| Original title | Le cavalier mongol |
| Country of production | France |
| Publishing year | 2019 |
| length | 86 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Hamid Sardar |
Guardian of the Mongolian Horses (French original title: Le cavalier mongol ) is a documentary by the ethnologist and director Hamid Sardar. His ethnographic film documentary is about members of the Mongolian ethnic group, the Darhat, who live in northern Mongolia on the border with Russia . Hamid Sardar (born in Iran in 1966 ) is a multi-award-winning documentary filmmaker with important photographic exhibitions in important galleries around the world, whose work has a strong academic background (Ph.D. in Harward, expert in Mongolian and Tibetan philology). Sardar lived in Mongolia for around 13 years from 2008 to document old traditional practices of the people who followed traditional ways of life again after the fall of communism. In the film Guardian of the Mongolian Horses , he tells of how the Darhat try to live a special form of steppe nomadism under harsh climatic conditions, in which some of the animals, the horses, are kept semi-wild.
Table of contents
The protagonist of the film, the young Shukhert, is known among the Darhat as the best trainer of wild Mongolian horses . For some years now, however, the Darhat's valuable horses have been stolen by members of the Tuwin ethnic group , who live on the Russian side of the border and sell the animals to Russian slaughterhouses because of the difficult economic situation there. Reindeer herders on the Mongolian side, who can even be assigned to the Tuwin ethnic group, help them to bring the horses across the border. When Shukherts white stallion disappears, he takes up the chase. In impressive footage, Hamid Sardar tells of a race against time, since Shukher's herd is in danger of not getting through the winter without the stallion. Although the Darhat keep various herd animals such as sheep and goats for milk and meat production, as well as yaks , which are excellent means of transport , to ensure their survival , they have specialized in breeding and riding their own white horse breed, the "Darhat Tsaagan", specialized and also enter into a special emotional alliance with them. Shukhert, the protagonist of the film, repeatedly refers to horses as human soul mates: Horses are sacred to the ethnic group. They are seen as a mirror of the human soul and it is believed that after the death of the owner they follow the owner into the afterlife. You also build a connection to the nature spirits. That is why legends are told about the origins of horses.
Geographical, social and political background of the film documentation
On the one hand, the film can be received as a narrative film, because it tells the story of the young man Shukhert, which one likes to follow because Shukhert has skills that enable him to survive in situations in which others would fail. He is unusually strong and skilful in everything that a life far away from any civilizational relief demands. However, since the director Hamid Sardar has a strong scientific background, he also introduces the audience to the special way of life of a remote ethnic group and reports a lot about the life of these people in an economically tense time in Mongolia. The Darhat are a people who live according to the principle of full nomadism. They live in yurts and move with them from pasture to pasture. The nomads keep sheep, goats, yaks and horses, they feed on their meat and milk and earn their living with it. The harsh circumstances of the nomadic lifestyle drive many younger Darhat into the city and thus into sedentary life, since it is now hardly possible to live from nomadism and the sale of horses alone.
The economy of this ethnic group follows the principle of seasonal pasture change. The Darhats spend the night in mobile accommodations, the yurts , made of wood and felt, which are transported on horseback or by car. In winter, wild boars are hunted and sheep and yaks are protected against the winter threats such as low temperatures, snowfall and wolves, while the horses live freely in the northern mountains near the Russian border. Since the taiga , one of the last untouched landscapes in Mongolia, is snow-covered in winter and hardly offers any grazing land, the Darhat find it difficult to look after the horses at this time of year. The Darhat therefore do not let their horses become completely tame so that they do not forget how to look after themselves. This special approach of vertical nomadism has the result that the horses do not forget to use their wild animal instinct, which enables them to find food even in winter and to defend themselves against wolves. Sheep and cashmere wool are sold in spring . When summer comes, the tribe fetches the horses from the mountains in the valleys to the south, tames them and rides them in for their daily work. The young men also take part in wrestling tournaments and earn additional money. A bit of money is also earned by helping other families. In autumn mainly sheep and yaks, but also horses, are slaughtered in order to get the meat over the winter months. The herd of horses then begins the most dangerous hike of the year in November, hundreds of kilometers north into the weather-protecting mountains just before the Russian border.
The social life of the Darhat takes place mainly within the family and the small communities beyond. The family lives together in a yurt, they move around with the cattle, but the families often support each other and there are distinct communities between several families belonging to a clan or clan . As a rule, the younger generations finance the lives of the older ones. The nomads come together again and again in summer at anniversary celebrations or commemorative celebrations and wrestling tournaments. Despite the attraction of the cities, many stick to their traditional way of life, only the young people often move to the cities, so that parents and grandparents are left alone and depend on the support of other families.
The Darhat area formerly belonged to the Tuwiner ethnic group. During the communist era, these were forcibly relocated to an area in what is now Russia, while the Darhat were assigned the border area between Mongolia and Russia. This resulted in a tribal rivalry that still exists today. The Tuvins steal the horses from the Darhat and then sell their meat illegally. The rivalry turned into a business that poses a threat to the Darhat community because, on the one hand, some Darhat cooperate with the Tuwinians out of economic need, but on the other hand it also strengthens the community, as they want to defend themselves against foreign thieves together.
The nomads have a strict distribution of tasks, which is strongly differentiated according to gender, and the film also tells of this, although it focuses heavily on the representation of the male role. While the women take care of the cooking and care of the animals, the men ride the horses and take on the more physically demanding tasks of caring for the animals.
In addition to nomadic animal husbandry, the depiction of wrestling scenes in summer plays an important role as a source of income but also as a social attraction in the context of festivals or commemorations. The wrestling match ensures social prestige and therefore it is trained with animals beforehand. One sees z. B. how Shukhert practices with foals, which he lifts up and lays on his back. In winter, the wild boar hunt provides additional income, in spring the sale of cashmere wool and sheep. The exchange of goods does not always take place for money, but also for other considerations, such as B. Natural produce.
The special achievement of the director Hamid Sardar, in this film as in his other photographic work, consists in allowing all of this to flow in alongside the main narrative of the film, in a documentary manner almost incidentally.
Web links
- Keeper of the Mongolian horses in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Film documentaire: Le cavalier mongol. Film documentaire, accessed on March 29, 2020 (French).
- ^ Annenberg Space for Photography: Hamid Sardar-Afkhami. Annenberg Space for Photography, December 14, 2012, accessed on March 29, 2020 .
- ↑ Lisa Srikiow: Thirteen years among nomads: "When we defended our horses against wolves, we became companions". In: Spiegel-Online. February 12, 2017, accessed April 29, 2020 .
- ↑ Stefan Fischer: Photo book "Dark Heavens": Immerse yourself in the apparently inexplicable. Sueddeutsche Zeitung, November 30, 2016, accessed on March 29, 2020 .