Makpal Abdrazakova and her eagle, 2010, Kazakhstan
Director Otto Bell with Aisholpan
THE EAGLE HUNTRESS B
Great Britain
USA Mongolia (87 mi)
2016 d: Otto Bell
Official
Website
If one purpose of a documentary film is to take viewers to a
time and place that is completely foreign to them, then this film succeeds
beyond belief, a film that takes us to the desolate landscape of the Mongolian mountains
and plains through some treacherous wintry conditions, including limited
sunlight, reduced to just two hours each day in the harshest conditions when
temperatures reach 50 degrees below zero, with utterly spectacular aerial
photography by Simon Niblett. Capturing
the magnificent vantage point of eagles in flight, shooting from hundreds of
yards away, the cameras capture the aerial sweep of the birds in flight, flying
at speeds of 180 miles per hour, yet they remain in sharp focus
throughout. In keeping with customs
handed down by Kazakh families for centuries, the film’s storyline follows the
exploits of Aisholpan Nurgaiv, a 13-year-old girl, as her father trains her to
become the first woman in her family’s twelve generations of eagle
hunters. When the Soviet Union ruled
Kazakhstan, many families fled to Mongolia, where Bayan-Ölgii is the
westernmost Mongolian province containing the country's only Muslim and Kazakh majority,
with Kazakhs comprising 93% of the population, where many families continue to
hunt with golden eagles, targeting foxes and hare in the cold winter months
when they are more easily seen against the white snowy backdrop, where the
eagle’s acute eyesight, sharp talons, predatory instincts, and ability to
navigate vast distances make them ideal hunters. There are an estimated 250 eagle hunters in
Western Mongolia. Every year in the
first week in October, the Kazakhs hold the annual Golden
Eagle Festival of Mongolia, where 70 eagle hunters vie for the top prize,
mounted on groomed and decorated horses, wearing traditional Kazakh hunting
attire, where prizes are awarded for speed, agility and accuracy, as well as
for the best traditional Kazakh dress.
In addition, there is a smaller festival held in the last week of
September called the Altai Kazakh Eagle Festival with about forty eagle hunters
participating. Although the Kazakh
government has made efforts to lure the practitioners of these Kazakh
traditions back to Kazakhstan, most Kazakhs have remained in Mongolia.
In 2013, Israeli photographer Asher Svidensky spent 40 days
photographing Kazakh families in Mongolia, where he sought out a girl to round
out his personal vision of “the future of eagle hunting.” With the help of his guide Dauit Daukysh
Ryskhan, Svidensky discovered Aisholpan Nurgaiv, the 13-year-old daughter of
the eagle hunter Agalai Nurgaiv, with the BBC
publishing a photo-essay in 2014 that captured the attention of the filmmaker,
who flew to Mongolia to secure the rights to Aisholpan’s story. As fate would have it, her father welcomed
the idea, as we learn that Aisholpan’s older brother joined the army in 2011,
so his daughter was next in line to pass down the ancient tradition, showing
outward enthusiasm about the idea, inviting the film crew to accompany them
that afternoon when he and his daughter were planning a trip to the Altai
mountains to capture a young eaglet of her own to train. One of the extraordinary sequences of the
film has Aisholpan being lowered by a rope from a steep rocky cliff in
temperatures hovering around zero as she drops in on an eagle nest as she
attempts to snare a female eaglet (larger, fiercer, and more powerful than
males) that is continuously evading her grasp while the mother eagle circles
overhead. There’s a short window to
perform this nifty trick, as the idea is to arrive just a day or two before the
young 3-month old eagle is ready to fly.
It’s a heart-stopping sequence, similar to that filmed by Guðmundur Arnar
Guðmundsson’s Icelandic film Heartstone
(Hjartasteinn) (2016), where a young boy is lowered over a cliff edge to
pick wild bird eggs from their nests. Interesting
that the scene is associated with machismo and masculinity in the Icelandic
film, while the dare-devil maneuver seems effortless by this brave young girl,
capturing a healthy young eagle named Ak Kanat, “White Wings.” Eventually making seven trips to Mongolia,
the filmmakers capture months of training where according to her father, Aisholpan
displays a natural ease when handling the animal, weighing up to 12 pounds,
where a baldak, or Y-shaped wooden rest, is attached to the saddle to carry the
eagle on horseback, as the eagle learns to fly great distances from her
father’s arm to her own, each wearing a heavy protective glove, coming when
called, recognizing Aisholpan’s distinct voice, Clip: The Eagle Huntress (1:31). According to tradition, after seven years,
the eagles are released back into the wild where they are free to mate and
raise their young.
The film actually opens with a ceremonial release of a prized
eagle, leaving it a newly slaughtered sheep initially to feed on, where the
viewer is drawn into the customary tradition of eagle hunters in the
region. Mostly handed down from father
to son, this one offers a unique twist, becoming a father and daughter story
that breaks with male tradition. Aisholpan
spends the week attending school in town, living in a dormitory with her two
siblings, where she is a straight-A student with aspirations to become a
doctor, returning home on the weekends to train her animal. She has six weeks of training before the
Golden Eagle Festival, where her father is one of the notorious figures and
personalities associated with the festival, having already won twice, where he
is one of the most respected elders. In
his eyes, girls can do anything boys can do, as long as they remain determined,
“There is no gender discrimination when it comes to hunting with
eagles…Aisholpan is a very brave girl.”
But other elderly eagle hunters are more doubtful, claiming “women are
weaker and more fragile,” where they’ll get “too cold” on the hunt, or “she’ll
have to get married soon anyway!” These
chauvinistic scoffs only make Aisholpan more determined to prove herself at the
festival, where she is not only the lone female among the 70 participants, but
also the youngest entrant, with both her father and grandfather supporting
her. Her mother laments the fact she
doesn’t get to spend enough time with her daughter, but realizes the
significance of her daughter’s ambitions and supports her whole-heartedly. Evaluated for their hunting attire and the
quality of their horses, the eagles are timed for their speed in swooping down
from mountain tops to their handlers calling out for them below with their arms
upraised, or their ability to catch prey using a dead rabbit tied to a
fast-moving rope. It’s an extraordinary
event, where footage of the eagles in flight offer awe-inspiring
cinematography, much of it filmed in slow motion, with Aisholpan having to
prove herself in each competition, with grumbling male onlookers having to eat
their words. Even as she surpasses all
expectations, they still believe a true test of skill comes with the
bone-chilling hunts of winter where the girl has yet to prove herself by
catching a fox. The final trek into the
snowy mountains in the 50-degree below zero winter chill is a brutal test, not
just for Aisholpan but for her eagle, who has never killed a live animal
before, especially one that fights back with deadly force. In a 20-day hunt, with only two-hours of sunlight
every day, where at times the snow is too deep for the horses, it’s an
astonishing feat, where the eagle fails in its first attempts, outfoxed by a
fox, but they persevere until they are eventually successful, where the degree
of difficulty is truly the ultimate test of stamina and skill.
So there are two diametrically opposing forces at work here,
a revelation about a unique Mongolian tradition that is cinematically
spectacular, and a willfully exploitive depiction of a young girl from the outer
edges of the world whose ambitions are blatantly manipulated to serve the
director’s single-minded purpose, becoming a manifesto on girlpower, where the
filmmakers resort to a bit of contrived overkill in the trite narration and
commercial musical refrain “You can do anything” from Sia’s “Angel by the
Wings” that plays over the closing credits.
While Aisholpan’s infectious smile and fearless approach make her an
ideal subject, she is not, as the film erroneously suggests, the first female
eagle huntress, and to suggest so is to express a knowingly inaccurate narrative. According to Adrienne Mayor’s extensive
historical overview, May 1, 2016 (pdf format), The Eagle
Huntress Ancient Traditions and New Generations, “eagle huntresses were
probably more common in ancient times…Archaeological discoveries of graves (ca
700 BC to AD 300) across ancient Scythia, from Ukraine to China, reveals that
steppe nomad females engaged in the same riding and hunting activities as the
men, and about one third of the women were active warriors in battle.” Unfortunately, the director is well aware of
previous female eagle hunters, but intentionally left them out of the narrative
and instead created a feel-good story of a young girl breaking the mold and
overcoming all odds, becoming a heartwarming tale that is primarily suited to
appeal to Western audiences, but is blatantly untrue. Consider this article written by Shamil
Zhumatov from March 6, 2012, Kazakhstan's
lone female eagle hunter - Reuters, profiling another eagle huntress, Makpal
Abdrazakova, who was first seen competing in 2009 and is now a lawyer and
continues to enter eagle contests, encouraging other young women, while her
father, Murat Abdrazakov, also continues to train new young girls. According to Mayor, the director refused to
meet Makpal when making his film, and when asked why he indicated “it is not
his responsibility to tell an ethnologically comprehensive story,” while co-producer
Asher Svidensky informed her in early 2016, “Entertainment isn’t
anthropology.” Instead the filmmakers
intentionally misrepresent Kazakh and Mongolian culture, showcasing well-decked
out elders in animal furs from the Kazakh community who refuse to acknowledge a
woman’s place in their hunting customs and traditions, claiming women belong in
the kitchen (male views like this exist in every society), all belittling and
undermining Aisholpan’s accomplishments, yet Mongolia is far from the backwards
or misogynistic culture presented, as women have voted and held office since
1924, more than 80 percent of women have secondary education, and 70 percent of
college students are women, where the historical independence of women since
ancient times is worthy of note. Strong women
have always been part of the nomad heritage and girls have never been forbidden
to train eagles. Girls and boys start
riding horses at age five and help with herds, as the challenging conditions of
the brutally harsh landscape has always meant that men and women engage in
strenuous riding activities together. From
the days of Robert Flaherty to Werner Herzog, documentary films are expected to
be culturally honest and historically factual, even if some obvious staging
exists in the film. Unfortunately, this
film skews the facts to create an overly determined film, whose goal is known
before the film even starts, becoming one of those films that makes the subject
matter fit the theme, regardless of contradictory evidence, only including what
meets the predetermined criteria and leaving out the rest.
Home Nena Atkinson from Women of Mongolia, New Media Research Exhibition, Summer 2015
Excellent article with some further understanding needed. As it stands Aisholpan was indeed sought out and the start was an unnaturally timed and incentivized one which speaks to the power differential and economic vulnerability underpinning the father's enthusiasm. Svidensky's Mongolia TV Part 1 interview says one thing but a mere month later when telling about his process to BBC he allowed the perception that he "found" Aisholpan and makes it seem like his photos of her were taken of an already hunting and apprenticing girl. And Otto Bell never has mentioned Svidensky's recruitment process...and the two men worked closely together with Svidensky becoming Bell's "helper" then Co-Producer. I have researched the backstory and media marketing of the film including the unmentioned exposure of the 1USD contract for life story rights etc.and was there when at the family home when it was unearthed. I have tracked this story since 2014 and my opinion essay "An eagle's eye view on Otto Bell’s 'The Eagle Huntress' took 7 months to research. It was published on August 24th by the UB Post and then censored at the bullying request of Otto Bell people on October 24th. Mongolia Live reposted the censored piece 48 hours later.I am on Twitter religiously trying to expose this filmmaker's unethical and exploitative actions and I know far more than i can say or write about about this still unfolding story. My long Google Plus article shows the depth of my involved research. I back everything I say with evidence and I have at least three people whose knowledge I have sworn confidentiality. Please follow me on Twitter and sent me a link to this so I can endorse it on Twitter. Meghan Fitz-James MeghanfjFitz on Twitter. My op essay was met with "all comments were praise" According to the UB Post and over 9000 people had red it within 24 hours of publishing. Mongolia News own UB Post and were the ones reached by Bell's people to bully for its censorship. Endorsers of my work include Adrienne Mayor,( who cites my research ), Tim Cope ( Mongolian tourism envoy), Tseren Enebish ( exposure of contract, now reportedly redone), Women of Kazakhstan head Dinara Assanova, Jamie Stantorian ( writer of a meta analysis) etc. Too bad I found out about the censorship...A gauntlet has been thrown. Please contact me on Twitter if you can and I will forward you a copy of the op essay.
ReplyDeleteExcellent article with some further understanding needed. As it stands Aisholpan was indeed sought out and the start was an unnaturally timed and incentivized one which speaks to the power differential and economic vulnerability underpinning the father's enthusiasm. Svidensky's Mongolia TV Part 1 interview says one thing but a mere month later when telling about his process to BBC he allowed the perception that he "found" Aisholpan and makes it seem like his photos of her were taken of an already hunting and apprenticing girl. And Otto Bell never has mentioned Svidensky's recruitment process...and the two men worked closely together with Svidensky becoming Bell's "helper" then Co-Producer. I have researched the backstory and media marketing of the film including the unmentioned exposure of the 1USD contract for life story rights etc.and was there when at the family home when it was unearthed. I have tracked this story since 2014 and my opinion essay "An eagle's eye view on Otto Bell’s 'The Eagle Huntress' took 7 months to research. It was published on August 24th by the UB Post and then censored at the bullying request of Otto Bell people on October 24th. Mongolia Live reposted the censored piece 48 hours later.I am on Twitter religiously trying to expose this filmmaker's unethical and exploitative actions and I know far more than i can say or write about about this still unfolding story. My long Google Plus article shows the depth of my involved research. I back everything I say with evidence and I have at least three people whose knowledge I have sworn confidentiality. Please follow me on Twitter and sent me a link to this so I can endorse it on Twitter. Meghan Fitz-James MeghanfjFitz on Twitter. My op essay was met with "all comments were praise" According to the UB Post and over 9000 people had red it within 24 hours of publishing. Mongolia News own UB Post and were the ones reached by Bell's people to bully for its censorship. Endorsers of my work include Adrienne Mayor,( who cites my research ), Tim Cope ( Mongolian tourism envoy), Tseren Enebish ( exposure of contract, now reportedly redone), Women of Kazakhstan head Dinara Assanova, Jamie Stantorian ( writer of a meta analysis) etc. Too bad I found out about the censorship...A gauntlet has been thrown. Please contact me on Twitter if you can and I will forward you a copy of the op essay.
ReplyDeleteGreat article! Thank you for doing some research!!
ReplyDeletePlease know The Eagle Huntress filmmaker&his people don't want my op essay seen https://t.co/RO03DMbfSA Please read my op essay & share I cite the work of Adrienne Mayor, and she mine.
And please see TV Mongolia Part 1 interview with Asher Svidensky and see how he soon after changed his description of his Next Generations project when speaking with the BBC....about the same time Otto BELL approached him about filming. He simply said he "found" Aisholpan to them and does not mentioning actively seeking a girl of "roughly the right age". He makes BBC think he had found an ALREADY apprenticing and hunting. Svidensky returned to Mongolia and became Bell's fixer and helper during the filming. Svidensky repeated his process description 9 months later on TedXUB talk. All along Bell says he simply was inspired by Svidensky’s photos and that Svidensky simply "stumbled apon" Aisholpan. He completely covers up the recruitment process which was an incentivized one. He wants the world to think Aisholpan had a completely natural and naturally timed start. And please see Talk with Me Star TV interview with Tseren Enebish minute 9+. Although Bell reportedly had the 1USD contract redone...he has never mentioned it's exposure in Mongolia. This was exposed more than 1/2 way through filming. Just after the eagel festival. And I was there. The contract was signed in July and discovered by Tseren Enebish to have been signed by the father without a shred of informed consent. Bell seems to try to explain things away preemptively by saying how poor he was.
Please follow me on Twitter at MeghanfjFitz I have followed this story since 2014 My long Google Plus essay shows the level of research I have done. The published op essay condenses my findings up to August 24th. The Google Plus version is updated to November 10th
I am trying to expose this filmmaker and his exploitative actions, which, I believe, are ongoing. I know FAR more than I can say or write about...yet.The filmmaker's Ripley bullied Mongolia NEWS to censor the published op essay which they did on October 24th. Too bad I found out about that...
To clarify the filmmaker's people bullied for the censorship. (Ripley was spellcheck error)
ReplyDelete