Коймун
I am a sheep
DIRECTED BY
Gulzat Egemberdieva
and
Thomas Lahusen
Digital HD, color & black & white, 10'50" (2023)
LOCATION:
near
Using footage shot in Kyrgyzstan and Soviet archival footage and photography, this 10-minute film tells the story of sheep, starting from ancient times, when they grazed on the meadows of Central Asia, crossing, together with their nomadic masters, the snowy mountains in search of new pastures. Illustrated by J. S. Bach’s Cantata BWV 208 “Schafe können sicher weiden” (Sheep can safely graze), their existence is brutally interrupted by the arrival of new masters, coming “from beyond the mountains” to implement what can be called the beginnings of (Soviet) industrial (animal) farming.
By giving voice to these sheep, the film addresses some of the pressing questions of today: the loss of dignity by those who have been colonized, used, and oppressed by “new masters,” and, with the disappearance of the “good shepherd” to watch over us, the catastrophe that economic and industrial indefinite growth has brought to the world we all live in.