IDFA 1988
Depending on Heaven: the Grasslands
Peter Entell
Zwitserland
1987
The first part of a bipartite series about the life of the Mongols in China. Entell shows a family of nomads whose quiet rhythm of life is determined by the change of seasons and the weather conditions through which heaven does or does not bless them and their droves.
The interviews, poems, songs and the sensitive pictures of life on the deserted windy steppes makes up a poetic document of the nomad culture. However, it is a lenient portrait that does not fully express the severity of nomadic existence, since we only see the family at their Sunday best and it is not shown, for example, how the hard winter, with its snow-storms and temperatures down to minus 50 C, can strike.
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