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March 09, 2004
The Story of the Weeping Camel
Directed by Byambasuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni
Screenings 3/7/04 4:30 pm and 3/9/04 9:00 pm at Camera One
Sometimes when a female camel has a very difficult delivery, it will shun its calf and not allow the infant to nurse. "The Story of the Weeping Camel" chronicles the lengths a family of Mongolian nomads in the Gobi desert go to in order to get a mother camel to accept her colt.
Munich film students Davaa and Falorni travelled thousands of miles of desert to find a family with large enough herds that this sort of event might happen, and they found perfection. Their lifestyle is almost completely alien to those of us who live in Western countries (although eventually the youngest boy begs his father to buy them a TV), and this slow and thoughtful treatment of a struggle to prevent tragedy is as much about life in the desert as it is about the camel.
Since its completion, this film has won awards from almost every festival at which it has appeared, and they are well deserved. The camera work is inspired, the family is surprisingly at ease in front of the camera, and it's impossible to resist the camel and her offspring.
Posted by Ealasaid at March 9, 2004 09:19 AM
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