The case of Darezhan Omirbaev reminds us that in cinema, the line between eminence and obscurity can be very fine indeed. Throughout his career, which is now in its fourth decade, the Kazakh filmmaker has received official approbation in the form of awards at Cannes and Locarno, as well as high praise from notable colleagues (Godard, Garrel) and critics (Kent Jones, Alexander Horwath). And yet his work remains all but undistributed, and even the arrival, following an interval of nine years, of not one but two new films—the feature Poet (2021) and the 30-minute Last Screening (2022)—within a space of months, elicited hardly any fanfare until the Viennale celebrated the occasion by dedicating the fourth issue of the lovely polyphonic journal Textur to Omirbaev’s oeuvre.
If Poet can be read…
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Cinema Scope (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 93 - Winter 2023