The daughter of the Khiva khan, Dzhemal, and her foster sister, Selekha, set off from Bukhara to Khiva. On the way, the caravan is attacked by bandits. The chieftain of the gang, Kur-bashi, is struck by Dzhemal's beauty, but the girl rejects the bandit's love. His concubine, Gul-Saryk, jealous of her new rival, helps the girls escape..
High hopes were riding on the short-lived production company
Bukhino when it was founded in April 1924, in what was then the
Bukhara People’s Soviet Republic. Previously, films screened in
Bukhara with Russian intertitles were poorly understood by the
locals, so Bukhino’s plans were for Uzbek intertitles, followed by
intended export to Muslim countries including Turkey, Persia, and
Egypt.
For their first film, The Minaret of Death, the Bukharan
government, pressed for cash, utilized the materials they had at
hand: national clothing, brocades, blankets, pillows, and saddles,
while silk and velvet robes with precious embroidery and expensive
weapons were taken from the wardrobe of the deposed Emir of
Bukhara. All outdoor scenes were filmed near the ancient fortress
walls of Bukhara, with its evocative monuments, abundance of
sunlight, and ethnographic character, while indoor scenes were
made in Leningrad at the new Sevzapkino studio, where large
sets of the palace interiors were built. Production began on 2
November 1924 and ended in May 1925.
The plot loosely derives from a 15th century Bukharan legend. A
caravan from Khiva that includes Dzhemal and her foster sister
Selekha is attacked by robbers, but the young women escape with
the help of the chief robber’s concubine. During their flight they
meet a young noble, Sadyk, who conducts them to their father’s
house, but shortly afterwards on their way to Khiva they’re taken
prisoner by the Emir of Bukhara. To celebrate his victory, the Emir
holds a traditional celebration (known as an uloq, or kўpkari) in
which riders compete for the carcass of a goat or a young ram:
the winner must reach the finish line without allowing his rivals
to recapture the prey. Sadyk wins the contest and Dzhemal is
his prize, but the Emir’s son Shakhrukh-bek kidnaps her and
makes her part of his harem. When challenged, he kills his father
and accuses Dzhemal of the murder. She’s imprisoned in the
Minaret of Death, but under Sadyk’s leadership, the populace
rebels against the cruel despot. Shakhrukh-bek is ready to throw
Dzhemal from the dizzying heights of the Minaret, but Sadyk
saves her and all ends happily.
While the press eagerly reported on the film’s production, it was
harshly attacked by the ideologically controlled official organs
upon release. The Minaret of Death was singled out by the Main
Political and Educational Committee of the People’s Commissariat
of Education of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic
(Glavpolitprosvet), headed by Lenin’s wife Nadezhda Krupskaya, and
declared ideologically inadmissible for distribution, both in the Soviet
East and generally within the USSR. Furthermore, it was accused of
falsely depicting everyday life and social relations, especially with
regard to the revolution in the Soviet East.
As reported by KinoGazeta (09.02.1926), the Commission recommended that the most
energetic measures be taken to stop the future production of this
type of film. And yet it proved a great success not just with locals
but internationally, selling worldwide from Germany to Bolivia and
appearing in fifth place in the 1928 ranking of Soviet film sales
abroad. Officially though, it was so heavily derided that this kind of
Orientalist genre film was soon eliminated from Uzbek productions.
The Ukrainian-born director Viachelsav Viskovskii (1881-1933)
began his career as an actor before moving into film direction
in 1915, making about 60 generally popular films up until 1919,
according to Russian film historian Rashit Yangirov. Many were
literary adaptations or chamber dramas, but he also directed
comedies and adventure films; two 1918 adaptations of Boccaccio’s
Decamaron, Odurachennyi muzh and Pokhozhdeniia mnimogo
pokoinikai, appear to have been released in the U.S. in 1922 or
1923 as The Deceived Husband. By then Viskovskii was in the
U.S., directing plays for the Yiddish Art Theatre and unsuccessfully
trying to get work in Hollywood. He returned to the Soviet Union
in 1924 and tried to integrate into the new ideology, but his efforts
were sharply disparaged by the critics, making it difficult to
judge their popular appeal. It has been proposed that he turned
to Orientalism in the hopes of finding a successful formula, and
indeed both The Minaret of Death and Tret’ia zhena mully (The
Mullah’s Third Wife, 1928) were well-received by the public but not
by the Soviet press. All his films were withdrawn from distribution
and he was forced to earn a living as an actor, appearing in a few
films like Fragment of an Empire (1929, Fridrikh Ermler) before
his death in 1933. – Nigora Karimova
