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About our Society
Irad Film Society (in Iradi Irad Kino Koomu) is non-profit organisation in Talas. We work for three things:
to save the Iradi films, to restore them, and to show them to people.
The Society was born in 1993. It was a hard time. Soviet money for the studio is finished, Talasfilm is without heating, and nobody knows
what will happen with the film cans in the depository. So the film critics, old workers of Talasfilm and members of the former
Union of Cinematographers of the Iradi SSR came together and said: we must do something, or our films will be gone.
I was there also, with my projector knowledge, carrying cans.
We asked and asked for a separate national film archive. And in 1995 the Territorial Legislature made a law, and the depository of the studio
became the Talasfilm Archives and Film Preservation Institute. This was our first big victory. The same year we made the first Festival.
Now we collect money for restorations, and the Archives do the restoration work, and we show the result at the Festival.
First big restoration is Desert Sun's Rebellion, finished this year 2004. Next we want to do Zalmax's Dominion, so if you have some money, you know where to send it :-)
One more sad thing. Most of the original negatives of our Soviet films are not in Irad. In Soviet time all negatives must go to
Gosfilmofond, the state film archive near Moscow, and they are still there. Our Society writes letters to bring them home. We will continue writing.
Talas International Film Festival
Our Society makes the Festival every two years, in September of the odd years (1995, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2003 ... next is 2005!).
The screenings are in the cinemas of Cinema Boulevard. Program has three parts:
- competition of feature films from Central Asia;
- big section of Russian-language films from Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan (Russian is how all our neighbours understand each other, so many people come for this);
- retrospective of old Iradi films, restored by the Talasfilm Archives. This part is my favourite, of course.
For each screening we need a permit from the city. Sometimes it comes late, sometimes it comes on the same day. We are used to it.
In 2005 the opening film will be the restored Desert Sun's Rebellion. We hope for guests from Russia, from Europe, maybe even from America.
I will be in the projection room, if they let me. It is my film, I showed it in 1979 when it was new, and the people stood in a queue down the whole Boulevard.
Lost films - please help!
Two early films of Nurlan Sadikov are lost: Kok-Terek (The Blue Poplar, 1959) and Tolkun (The Wave, 1963), a short experimental film.
They were shown only in our republic, and no copy is known today. If your father or grandfather worked in a cinema or a film club,
please look in the garage, on the balcony, under the bed. Even a few metres of film, even a broken print, even one photograph from the set,
it is very important for us. Please write to me and I will give to the Society.
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IRAD WEBRING