The first retrospective of director Ali Khamraev to be held in Russia

Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- From 7 June to 7 July, the Illusion cinema and the cinema hall of the Engineering building of the Tretyakov Gallery will host the first Russian retrospective of director Ali Khamraev.

The program is dedicated to the 85th anniversary of the master.

The program will include not only the westerns that have become the hallmark of the director (the trilogy - "Extraordinary Commissar" (1970), "Without Fear" (1971) and "The Seventh Bullet" (1972)), but also Khamraev’s early paintings, including the debut film "Little Stories About Children Who..." (1961), comedy "Where are you, my Zulfiya?" (1964) and others. 

The visitors will also be able to see Khamraev’s poetic paintings, awarded prizes at international film festivals, “A Man Goes for Birds” (1975, the Silver Peacock Prize at the Delhi International Film Festival in 1977), “Triptych” (1979, Grand Prix at the San Remo International Film Festival in 1980 year), an autobiographical tape about the search for the grave of the deceased father "I Remember You" (1985), the lyrical "Garden of Desires" (1987), which takes place in the summer on the eve of the Great Patriotic War, and the European production of the director "Bo Ba Bu" (1998), filmed with the participation of Italian and French producers.

In total, more than 20 films by Ali Khamraev will be shown as part of the retrospective, which will represent a significant part of his legacy. The program will be completed by the documentary films about artists Igor Savitsky’s Passion (2015) and Pavel Benkov’s Sunny (2016), commissioned by the Marjani Foundation, and the Russian premiere of the director’s latest feature film, Melon Aroma in Samarkand (2021).

Ali Ergashevich Khamraev was born in Tashkent in 1937 and grew up in a cinematic environment, since his father Ergash Khamraev, a Tajik by nationality, was one of the founders of Uzbek cinema, and his mother Anastasia Tarasich also worked at the Uzbekfilm film studio. After graduating from VGIK in 1961, Ali Khamraev, in collaboration with director Mukadas Makhmudov, staged the almanac “Little stories about children who ...” at the Tajikfilm film studio, and after that he returned to his homeland, where he shot his main films at Uzbekfilm.

Khamraev’s talent and skill became evident after the release of the social drama "White, White Storks" (1966), and the films he made in the 1970s were recognized not only in the USSR, but also abroad. Ali Khamraev worked in a variety of genres - staged melodramas and musical films, comedies, documentaries, philosophical and poetic parables. The director was especially famous for his action-packed films about the Civil War in the genre of "Eastern", named after the Western. 

The culture and history of Central Asia and its desert landscapes often became a source of inspiration for the director, and it can be said that Ali Khamraev, like Tarkovsky and Ioseliani, became an intermediary between east and west. He did not hesitate to take advice from his eminent colleagues, whether it was Akira Kurosawa, Masaki Kobayashi, Sergey Parajanov or Federico Fellini, and friendship with Michelangelo Antonioni grew into a never-realized project about Tamerlane, after which Khamraev emigrated and now lives between Uzbekistan and Italy, east and west.