UK premiere; with a recorded introduction by director Amanzhol Aituarov; Grand Prix at the 1989 Montreal World Film Festival

Wheelchair accessible, English subtitles, SDH subtitles (Closed Captions), Pay-what-you-can tickets (£0-£8)

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The Kazakh New Wave is known for its grim, ascetic, and darkly humorous portrayals of the late Soviet Kazakhstan. One such film that stands out however is writer/director Amanzhol Aituarov’s The Touch (1989) – a ‘minor work’ of the Kazakh New Wave, whose earnest portrayal of tragic love between two outcast nomads has a spiritual, mythic, and almost esoteric sensibility but formally borrows from the subdued cinematography of Uzbek auteur Ali Khamrayev (a close friend and stylistic ally of Andrey Tarkovskiy).

The framing device of the film is that of an intimate conversation, held in hushed tones between two separating lovers in the early morning in 1980s’ Kazakhstan. A woman is coming to terms with her partner’s betrayal – reimagining it as a stranded blind girl’s quest for survival in the Kazakh steppe of a long-gone past. On her way to the Promised Land, the girl encounters a runaway slave, and the two continue their journey together, until they are informed of a tragic prophecy predicting their end…

Making an unconventional shift from a depiction of political or national disenchantment towards a sensuous portrayal of companionship, love and grief, The Touch is a small masterpiece of Central Asian cinema – shown in the UK for the very first time, with original English subtitles created by Samizdat Festival.

Content notes: sexual threat, attempted sexual assault, murder, violence, suicide, grief

Curated by Ilia Ryzhenko