Rashid Nugmanov - Igla AKA The Needle (1988)

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Who is Moro? A Western superman, a cultural hero and a trickster, who descended to the Earth to restore order and justice. As soon as he enters the frame he evokes a number of cinema allusions of Western rebels: young Marlon Brando, James Dean, and popular that time Bruce Lee. The soundtrack contains fragments of the French and German language lessons. Moro ("a needle" in the Kazakh language) is dressed in a black leather jacket and gloves. He swings a key-chain that plays a Disney tune. He has two problems to solve: Spartak owes him money and Dina needs to be taken off the needle. In both cases he has to fight. That is his main virtue. Besides, he is a free-spirit, fearless, fair and honest.

The Needle by Rashid Nugmanov was not only the starting point for the Kazakh new wave but also for the entire "perestroika" cinema. The artistic underground of the Soviet Union became "legalized" for the first time in this film. The middle of the 1980s was the period when the "non-official" and "nonconformist" arts entered the mainstream. The rock superstar Victor Tsoy, who played the protagonist, was the idol of the Soviet youth and his songs proclaimed a call to action: "Change! We want to change!" The film director not only declared the beginning of a new era but also declared a death sentence on the old times. The antipode of Moro is Spartak, who says: "I excuse my committee and I excuse myself!" The prophecy of an artist always astounds me. Rashid Nugmanov is a film director who thinks structurally and precisely. On one hand he was making a film for youth and therefore it had to speak the language of youth and describe the youth subculture. He cast Victor Tsoy and Petr Mamonov, the youth music idols, and gave his film the music video esthetic, with an atmosphere of irony and mockery. On the other hand he exactly recreated the change of the ideological paradigms by using soundtracks and music – songs of different periods, radio and television shows, and also by making artistic space decisions.

The visual esthetic of a film is a half the content of a film. Of course, the cinematographer Marat Nugamnov, brother of the film director, contributed to the visual style of the film. The film’s images of decay and emptiness serve as a manifestation of the disintegration of the Soviet Union. A continuous shot, panning along Dina’s apartment clogged with old useless stuff that used to belong to Dina’s father, says more than any words. The scene at the Aral Sea looks like a metaphor for the disintegrating Soviet Union – abandoned houses; the dried-out sea; ships stuck in the sand; a crewless boat.