Film Review: Turksib (The Steel Road, 1929)
Documentaries, if they deal with sufficiently exotic subject, can be as interesting the audience as the live action films. They can also serves as a powerful propaganda tool. Soviet Union, with its large swaths of remote, barely explored and sparsely populated territories that were going to rapid industrialisation during the First Five-Year Plan (1928 – 1932), provided plenty of opportunity for both. One such opportunity was used by authors of Turksib a.k.a. The Steel Road, 1929 silent film directed by Viktor Turin which is considered to be one of the most influential documentaries of its time.
The film deals with construction of Turkestan-Siberian Railway (“Turksib”), one of the most important infrastructure projects of Soviet Union in late 1920s and early 1930s, which ultimately connected Soviet Central Asia (“Turkestan”) with Siberia. The film is divided in five acts. First part shows the problem that led to construction of the railway – Central Asia is Soviet Union’s most important source of cotton, but the there is lack of arable land and water that can support both growing of cotton and growing of grain. Second part shows difficulties of transporting goods through traditional means like caravans; Turkestan is divided from grain-rich Siberia by next to impassable desert and mountains. Third part shows surveyors coming to steppe to determine the railway’s route, causing a lot of interest among curious nomadic tribes. Four part shows the actual construction, and the fifth part shows how the rail cars and equipment advance during the construction that would, as the intertitles repeatedly tell, be finished “in 1930”.
Many empires justified its rule by bringing order, civilisation and prosperity to places that previously had little of that. But few did so with such enthusiasm with Soviets, at least judging by Turksib which shows how lands where the way of life had barely changed in millennia were brought into 20th Century overnight. Turin in his film shows how people of Central Asia that had to suffer whims of unforgiving nature now can enjoy benefits of tractors and other mechanical equipment; perilous caravan trek over the desert is replaced with quicker, safer and more comfortable mode of transportation in the form of railway; with railway comes civilisation, and with it ability for local population to learn how to read and write and thus join other nations of modern world. Turin conveys this message without any subtlety – words from the popular slogan are repeated in intertitles over and over again. But Turksib, at the same time, has some shots of extraordinary beauty, especially those showing the natural sights of Central Asia and Siberia. Images of nomads, whose clothes, social mores and way of life is still untouched, represent a valuable glimpse into the past that is priceless for historians and ethnographers. Although made with clear agenda to celebrate achievements of Soviet regime, Turksib was greeted well even beyond Soviet borders, especially in Britain where John Grierson, one of the most distinguished early documentary film makers, used it as inspiration for his work.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
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