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MAINE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

'Desert of Forbidden Art' a thrilling revelation

Review

JP DEVINE

The point of movies is, and always was, to take us to another place, a place away from our familiar streets, to educate and thrill us with visions that might ordinarily have slipped by us, as we whirled through our workaday lives. Filmmakers from around the planet have always done this and done it well. But with the walls of tyranny and suppression torn down in the past century, new and exciting visions have appeared. Centuries of lost art and literature have been exposed through the hard work of pioneers in restoration, digging through the rubble of a century of political suppression.

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AT RAILROAD SQUARE: “The Desert of Forbidden Art” plays at Railroad Square Cinema today at 3:45 p.m., Wednesday at 9:20 p.m., and Saturday at noon.

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A hero of this period was Igor Savitsky, a child of the White Russian society of wealth and comfort in Kiev. Savitsky dreamed of becoming a great painter, but when he was rebuffed by one of his idols who said that he would never be a great artist, Savitsky began to withdraw into depression.

The beginning of "Desert" shows how, in the heady and exciting art world of the 1920s, avant-gardism in painting and literature became the rage and plaything of the wealthy. During the regime of Josef Stalin's Soviet Union, artists of the avant-garde began being discredited for not following Stalin's dreams of filling the museums with "Proletariat art," depicting the courageous lives of the Soviet working class. In wave after wave of terror, many were executed, even with their families, or thrown into insane asylums and gulags. During this time much great avant-garde art was destroyed or hidden.

It was because of Savitsky, who thought himself a failure, that vast troves of such "forbidden" art from an unknown part of the world were saved.

Working in the Khorezm Archeological and Ethnographic Expedition in 1950 in the northwestern Republic of Karakalpakstan, Savitsky was stunned by the beauty of the local folk art. He began collecting clothing and jewelry and paintings, some of long-dead artists, paintings that were hidden in horse barns, under floorboards and even used as patches for leaky ceilings.

Here in this far distant corner of the Soviet empire, the Communist censorship had little power. So Savitsky began what became his life's true work, becoming a savior of art, seeking out and preserving fabulous modern art, art that would have never been seen again. With clever manipulation of the system, Savitsky used monies from the party to build a modern museum in the desert that housed this wonderful work. The story of Savitsky's Nukus Museum in Uzbekistan is the incredible result of Tchavdar Georgiev and Amanda Pope's film, "The Desert of Forbidden Art." This documentary, written and directed by the pair and now being shown as a part of the Maine International Film Festival in their main theater, will, for the first time, reveal to the many in the West, the dazzling color of this region's modern art.

It truly must be seen on the big screen to be believed. It is not only a rich gift to us here in the West, but a tribute to the courage of a single man, a true believer, who outfoxed the foxes and brought unseen art to the world.

"The Desert of Forbidden Art," is no dry scholarly lecture, but a thrilling revelation. It is not only about Savitsky and his work, but a mesmerizing journey into the past and the lives of these artists, with testimony by their children and grandchildren and world-class art historians. It is a spectacular, jaw-dropping two hours of never-before-seen documentary film on the horror visited upon the artists who suffered under the Communist boot.

"The Desert of Forbidden Art" is yet again proof that film and the work of its artists is truly the magic lantern that lights a dark world. It will certainly be honored at the next Academy Awards. Academy Award winners Ben Kingsley, Sally Field and Edward Asner provide the voices of the past.

"The Desert of Forbidden Art" shows at Railroad Square Cinema today at 3:45 p.m., Wednesday at 9:20 p.m., and Saturday at noon.