Kazakhstan films escape ‘Borat’s’ shadow

— Say “Kazakhstan” to most filmgoers and their minds will jump to “Borat,” Sacha Baron Cohen’s mockumentary about a plow-driving, shower-averse horndog that took the U.S. box office by storm in 2006.

The film put the vast but obscure oil-rich nation of 16 million, wedged between Russia and China, on the map for many Americans but left Kazakh officials objecting that Cohen had misrepresented the country: For starters, many of its inhabitants are not Eastern European-sounding people with bushy mustaches but Koran-reading Central Asians. Moreover, the American comedy overshadowed Kazakhstan’s renewed drive to cultivate a national cinema of its own, an effort that has flourished in fits and starts since the 1960s.

But increasingly, Kazakhs are getting to tell their own stories onscreen for an ever-more global if still decidedly niche audience. In the five years since “Borat” became a sensation, Kazakhstan has seen one film, “Tulpan,” win the prestigious Un Certain Regard prize at the Cannes Film Festival and another, “Mongol,” earn a foreign-language Academy Award nomination. That’s a feat that’s eluded cinematic powerhouses like France and Germany in the same period.

The fruits of Kazakh labor will be on display at UCLA this weekend when the university kicks off “Kazakhstan: Montage of Cinemas,” a two-week retrospective that organizers say is the first such spotlight in the Southland. And more movies are in the pipeline: Production is now underway on a historical epic called “Myn Bala,” which has a budget of $7 million — small by Hollywood standards but one of the most expensive films Kazakhstan has ever made.

And yet, still, there’s that pesky man in the unwashed suit.

“It’s funny when people wonder why Kazakhs are not like ‘Borat’ or why we’re not wearing clothes like in that movie,” Aliya Uvalzhanova, a producer on “Myn Bala,” said via a translator over coffee at the Cannes Film Festival last month.

“We were at the Library of Congress in the United States, where we had the honor to enter the movie ‘The Gift to Stalin,’” Uvalzhanova recalled, referring to the country’s 2008 period film about a group of ethnically diverse orphans thrust together in an orphanage during a Stalinist purge. “And a man we thought was smart came up to us and wondered why we’re not wearing fur hats like this,” she said, gesturing above her head to indicate a tall piece of headgear.

But as much as anything, Kazakhstan’s obscurity was the reason Cohen chose it; if you’re going to use a far-flung locale to send up racist misperceptions, why not go with one of the most remote places imaginable? And there are few more remote than Kazakhstan, which lay in the shadow of more prominent Soviet republics for much of the 20th century. (Inhabitants speak the Turkic language of Kazakh, with many also speaking Russian to at least some degree.)

Ermek Amanshaev — who as the head of the national commission Kazakhfilm is perhaps the most important figure in the country’s movie industry — is optimistic that outsiders see beyond “Borat.”

“[You] may be exaggerating the meaning of ‘Borat,’” he said via a translator by phone. “As far as I know, Kazakhstan is mostly known abroad as a country with rich natural resources.”

He added: “We don’t have intentions to shoot an anti-’Borat’ movie. We have intentions to make perfect films with real stories and real emotions that depict interesting fates of its characters.” He did allow that “10 to 15% of our films are image-building.”

Producers hope “Myn Bala” fits that bill. Directed by Akan Satayev — who previously helmed “Strayed,” a kind of Kazakh “Frantic” — “Myn Bala” tells a variation of a popular founding myth about the “thousand children,” as its title translates into English, who saved the country during an 18th century invasion of tribes known as the Dzungars.

“It’s important to show the Western world how the country came to be,” said the film’s Russian-born producer, Anna Katchko, who speaks near-fluent English. But a moment later, lamenting a burgeoning multiplex scene in Kazakhstan that favors Hollywood comedies and action movies, Uvalzhanova added: “It’s also important to show Kazakhs their history.”

Many of the country’s most prominent films are creation stories. The preoccupations of Kazakh cinema form curious bookends: On one hand are the epics set hundreds of years ago, when the country was populated by disparate and often warring groups. On the other are modern tales centered on the conflicts and loyalties in the 20 years since the country gained independence after the demise of the Soviet Union.

The historical dramas tend to have a surprisingly big-budget feel, often taking advantage of the country’s sweeping landscape. The modern ones are grittier, their violence born of a post-communist chaos, and often highlight a tension between the purity of tradition and the greed of a new world.

“What I think we’re seeing now is a new moment that acknowledges not just long-ago history of the country but the Soviet experience,” said Shannon Kelley, the head of public programs at the UCLA Film & Television Archive who curated “Montage.”

The school’s retrospective focuses on both ends. Films with a modern bent include 2007’s “Racketeer,” about an innocent boy who becomes a violent extortionist in the years after the fall of the Soviet Union, and “Schizo,” a 2004 film set in the same period about gangsters and illegal fistfights, in addition to the more delicate “Gift to Stalin.”

Period dramas are represented via 2008’s “Tulpan,” a romantic dramedy about a man who returns from Russian naval service to his rural village in the hope of marrying a local girl and becoming a shepherd, and 2005’s “Nomad,” about a young warrior’s rise to fend off invaders in 18th century Kazakhstan. “The circumstances of Kazakhstan are so unique, with the mix of ethnicities and political situations they lived under, that it makes for a lot of really interesting stories about who does and doesn’t belong,” Kelley said.

Also screening at the retrospective is one of the forerunners of modern Kazakh cinema, “Land of the Fathers,” a 1966 movie about a man who takes a grandson on a train ride through Russia to recover the body of the boy’s father, killed in World War II.

But the country is intent on becoming more than just a bastion of inward-looking art-house cinema. (Kazakhfilm’s website proclaims its internationalism with an announcement of an event last year in which “Hollywood stars Adrien Brody, Mark Dacascos and Armand Assante” — first credit: “Judge Dredd” — “have visited Kazakhfilm cinema studio named after Shaken Aimanov.”)

Asked what genres he’d most like his nationally subsidized production arm to focus on, Amanshaev ticks off a surprisingly specific list: comedies, romances, adventure movies and, only after them, historical pieces. His goal is more commercial efforts that can compete with the Hollywood offerings within Kazakhstan and possibly even find some traction abroad.

There may be a bit of a learning curve, though, for Kazakh filmmakers and marketers. Among the upcoming releases Amanshaev mentioned is a movie called “Windy Girl.”

“It’s a romantic story that people all over the world can understand,” he said, “about a girl who’s the fiancé of a wealthy oligarch but at the same time falls in love with a nerdy guy.”

Making it even more commercial, he added, is that “it resembles the famous ‘Hangover’ movie” — with only a few minor differences.

“It takes place,” he said, “not in Las Vegas but in the provincial town of Shymkent. And they don’t get as intoxicated. But they have the same experiences.”

steve.zeitchik@latimes.com