Die Reise Nach Kafiristan
Switzerland / Germany / Netherlands,
2001, 100 min
Shown in 2002
CREDITS
- dir
-
Fosco Dubini
- prod
-
Fosco Dubini, Donatello Dubini
- scr
-
Fosco Dubini, Donatello Dubini, Barbara Marx
- cam
-
Matthias Kälin
- editor
-
Christel Maye
- cast
-
Jeanette Hain, Nina Petri, Matthew Burton, Hassan Darweesh, Ozlen Soydan, Abbul Karim Qawasmi
- source
-
Media Luna Entertainment, Hochstaden Str. 1-3, D-50674 Köln, Germany. FAX: 49-2-2121-2382. EMAIL: info@medialuna-entertainment.de
- premiere
-
U.S. Premiere
-
COMMENTS
Donatello Dubini in person.
OTHER
“Terra Incognita,” says an archivist for the Royal Geographical Society, as he offers a map of Persia to ethnologist Ella Maillart. And, indeed, early on it becomes clear that The Journey to Kafiristan will use the female body and psyche as a metaphor for crossing the borders of distinct unknown regions—topographical, emotional, sexual, intellectual. In the spring of 1939—and the encroaching threat of Nazism—two women set off from Geneva via the Balkans and Turkey to explore the near-mythic land of Kafiristan (Land of Infidels), a remote valley north of Kabul. Joining Ella Maillart, who is already well known for "The Forbidden Journey," her written account of her travels through Tibet and Nepal, is the photojournalist and writer, Annemarie Schwarzenbach. Although ostensibly their purpose for the trip is professional, each realizes that she is on a search of self-discovery, and soon the outer world of exotic terrain and peoples begins to mirror an interior longing for connection with self and other. That deeper hunger manifests itself through Annemarie’s drug addiction and Ella’s stoicism and nomadic lifestyle. Given the world’s current political and cultural focus on Afghanistan, viewers will be drawn to the film’s depiction of the visually breathtaking and mysterious spirit of remote central Asia.
—Cathleen Rountree
FACTOID #208
Before the showing of Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest at the 40th SFIFF, Bay Area editor Walter Murch (who selected the film to screen in the Indelible Images series), passed out fortune cookies to the crowd with Bresson’s musings on making films.
