State of Dogs - A dog's life
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | State of Dogs - A dog's life |
| Original title | Нохойн орон Nochoin oron |
| Country of production | Belgium |
| original language | Mongolian |
| Publishing year | 1997 |
| length | 87 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Peter Brosens , Dorjchandyn Törmönch |
| script | Peter Brosens, Dorjchandyn Törmönch |
| production | Peter Brosens |
| music | Charo Calvo |
| camera |
Heikki Färm , Sachjjaagiin Bjamba |
| cut | Octavio Iturbe |
| occupation | |
| |
State of Dogs - Ein Hundeleben ( Mongolian original title: Нохойн орон Nochoin oron ) is a Belgian-Mongolian film by the directors Peter Brosens and Dordschchandyn Törmönch from 1997. The film, which has won numerous festivals, combines elements of a documentary with the stylistic devices of a film drama and uses a fable about a shot street dog represents the Mongolian popular belief in the post-socialist Ulaanbaatar .
action
Basar ( Басар ) lives as one of more than 100,000 street dogs in the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar until he is shot by a dog catcher, a lonely man who is disliked by society for his occupation. The dog catcher drives Bazaar's carcass to the garbage dump on the outskirts.
However, Bazar's mind then wanders through the city while his lifeless body slowly rots, reminiscing about the times when he lived as a shepherd dog with the nomads in the steppes and how he struggled through life as a lonely stray in the city. Finally, darkness falls over the city for a moment when the dragon Rah devours the sun, but the sun soon returns and Basar finds a pregnant woman whose child he - as the narrator suggests - is reborn.
The general story about bazaar, consisting of several episodes, is held together by a narrator ( Bandsaryn Damtschaa ) using voiceover . This story is interrupted and supplemented with recordings of poetry recitations, the solar eclipse of March 9, 1997, and a contortionist in the steppe.
background
At the time the film was shot, Ulaanbaatar was home to around 800,000 people. In addition, the city was populated by 120,000 street dogs, against whom the city authorities tried to take action by recruiting dog catchers with good wages. However, the city's residents largely disapproved of this practice, as killing an animal is considered an evil act for them, and according to Mongolian popular belief, a dog can ultimately be reborn as a human in its next life. This moment of tension is in State of Dogs - A Dog's Life with the myth of the immortal dragon Rah, who devoured the sun and spat it out again after protests, and ethnographic images from town and country.
production
Peter Brosens went to Mongolia for the first time in 1993 to report on the first free elections, and on the occasion he produced the film City of the Steppes . During this stay, he already noticed the number of strays in the Mongolian capital. With Poets of Mongolia (1999), Brosens also brought out a third documentary about Mongolia.
The 35mm - color film was created with the participation and support of numerous European production companies and film institutes, including ZDF , Arte , Det Danske Film Institute and Eurimages . The film was shot in Ulaanbaatar and northern Mongolia. State of Dogs is Brosen's first feature-length documentary and Törmönch's debut as a (co-) director and screenwriter.
State of Dogs - A dog's life is listed as a documentary by the Internet Movie Database , among other things, despite numerous elements of a film drama. The actors in the film are not actors; most of the scenes in the film, including the one with the dog catcher, are authentic recordings.
The first performance in Germany took place on March 17, 1999 on Arte.
reception
“ The combination of a Belgian documentary sensibility and a Mongolian interest in fable and legend gives' State of Dogs' a unique vision ” (German: “The combination of the sensitivity of a Belgian documentary and the Mongolian interest in fables and legends gives' State of Dogs 'a unique look'), wrote David Stratton in his review in Variety magazine . According to Stratton, the film is an “ at times astonishing mixture of travelogue and mysticism […] beautiful, haunting and distressing ” (German: “at times astonishing mixture of travelogue and mysticism […] beautiful, gripping and terrifying”).
The stylistic diversity and the difficulty of assigning the film to a genre were also emphasized in other reviews, for example the film was also referred to as the “ astonishing mix of personal journey and social commentary ” (German: “astonishing mix of personal journey and social commentary”) described, David Dalgleish described the film as “ peculiar hybrid, a patchwork of documentary and fiction, travelogue and animal fable, mysticism and social realism ” (German: “strange hybrid, a patchwork of documentation and fiction, travelogue and animal fable, mysticism and social Realism"). Much of the material used in the film, according to Dalgleish, who praised the camera work and the sound design in particular, would have no place in a more structured format, but it was precisely these scenes that would make the “leisurely, unobtrusive film” so appealing. State of Dogs - A dog's life is an extraordinary film, and its charms are not those of an ordinary film. Similarly, Leah Kohlenberg wrote in her review for Time Magazine , State of Dogs - A dog's life defies a standard classification and is “ an ambitious effort that isn't always easy to follow on screen. Yet there is something arresting about this small gem of a movie "(German:".. An ambitious attempt to be followed on the screen is not always easy, but there is something Addictive to this little gem of a film ") For asiaexpress is State of Dogs - A dog's life an extraordinary film, "certainly" the best from post-communist Mongolia, profound, thoughtful, highly spiritual, almost mystical, slowly but never boring.
Anat Pick analyzed State of Dogs - A Dog's Life as an ethnographic film in which three dimensions or perspectives are interwoven: the human of the inhabitants of the city, the animal of the bazaar and the cosmological order. The film embeds the stark realism of human history in the mysticism and poetry of Bazar's wandering soul. On asiaexpress , Bazaar's rebirth is interpreted as a metaphor for the human condition in which everything flows and is in motion.
Meinte van Egmond called the film a contemporary mythical parable that reflects on Mongolian life. Alvaro Machado went a clear step further in his interpretation for the Folha de S. Paulo , the bazaar's refusal to surrender to his fate and to be reborn as a human being, to the cultural disfigurement and impoverishment of Mongolia, to its “modernization” and embedding the globalized economy from the late 1980s and the killing of street dogs related to the execution of shepherds in Mongolia in the 1940s whose lifestyle had not followed the “development” model.
Awards
The directors Peter Brosens and Dordschchandyn Törmönch received numerous nominations for State of Dogs - A Dog's Life at festivals in various countries and were awarded the following prizes, among others:
São Paulo International Film Festival 1998
- Critic award
Message to Man - International Documentary, Short & Animated Film Festival 1998
- Special prize from the jury
Visions du Réel 1998
- Grand Prix
Molodist 1999
- Award for the best documentary
- Don Quixote Award
MediaWave International Festival of Visual Arts 1999
- Jury award for the best script
Gavà International Environmental Film Festival 1999
- Award for the best feature film
Web links
- State of Dogs - A dog's life in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c David Dalgleish: Nohoi Oron. State of Dogs , at mindspring.com, accessed November 11, 2018
- ↑ a b State of Dogs , on yidff.jp, accessed on November 11, 2018
- ^ A b Anat Pick: Ecovisions: Seeing Animals in Recent Ethnographic Film . closeupfilmcentre.com; accessed on November 11, 2018
- ^ Michaela Schäuble: The Ethnographer's Eye: Vision, Narration, and Poetic Imagery in Contemporary Anthropological Film . In: Rui Manuel G. de Carvalho Homem, Maria de Fátima Lambert (Ed.): Writing and Seeing: Essays on Word and Image . Rodopi, Amsterdam / New York 2006, ISBN 90-420-1698-1 , p. 308
- ^ State of Dogs , at magichourfilms.dk, accessed November 11, 2018
- ↑ a b State of Dogs , on deckert-distribution.com, accessed on November 11, 2018
- ↑ a b State of Dogs - A dog's life in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- ↑ a b Leah Kohlenberg: Die Like a Dog , on time.com, accessed on November 11, 2018
- ^ State of Dogs - A Dog's Life . zweausendeins.de; accessed on November 11, 2018
- ↑ Piet Goethals: Mongolia forever , on knack.be, accessed on November 11, 2018
- ^ David Stratton: State of Dogs . variety.com; accessed on November 11, 2018
- ↑ a b State of Dogs / Nohoi Oron (Mongolia, 1998) . asiaexpress.it; accessed on November 11, 2018
- ↑ Meinte van Egmond: State of Dogs - Nohoi Orion (1998) , on cinemagazine.nl, accessed on November 11, 2018
- ↑ Alvaro Machado: "O Estado do Cão": Produção toca réquiem por Mongólia descaracterizada , on folha.uol.com.br, accessed on November 11, 2018