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MEET ADILJAN
In Progress, 70 min. Beta
SP (shot on DV)
SYNOPSIS
The film Meet Adiljan follows Adil Huxur, a famous
Uighur tight-rope walking artist, as he and his troupe
tour across the Taklamakan desert in 3 rag tag busses,
performing nightly in new oasis villages. Adil, now
teaching his young daughters the craft, descends from
a long line of tight-rope walking ("dawaz")
performers. Since he first broke the Guinness world
record in 1997 by walking further, higher and faster
than the rest, his own fame has significantly eclipsed
anything achieved by previous dawaz generations. Adil
has now become an inadvertent national icon for his
people's struggle, bearing uncanny resemblance to the
dawaz hero of an old Uighur myth who once freed his
people from an oppressive reign of invading ghosts.
Despite years of heavy-handed government repression,
nationalist sentiment amongst ethnic Uighurs boils
under the surface. Recent separatist demonstrations in
the 1990s resulted in the government's "Strike Hard"
policy to incarcerate and frequently execute outspoken
Uighur nationalists. A policy being exacted in
increasingly harsh ways since September 11th.
Throughout Xinjiang there is a heavy police and
military presence. News is controlled, travel and
mosque attendance is restricted and public meetings
are forbidden. Few rural villages have telephones, and
urban phones are liable to be tapped. One can be
jailed for years on mere suspicion of subversion.
In this environment, resistance tends to happen in
smaller ways, like refusing to speak Chinese, wearing
Islamic dress or buying from stores run by Uighurs,
even though the produce may be suspect. Since the
revolution, communist leaders have required the entire
country to go by Beijing time. Much of Xinjiang lies
three time zones behind the capital. In this far
western outpost, where a Muslim majority lives
restively under Chinese rule, you can tell a lot about
a man's politics by how he sets his clock.
Meet Adiljan is a film about seeking balance: balance
between minority separatist yearnings and Han Chinese
rule... balance between an American filmmaker and a
remote Muslim community... and balance between our
flightless bodies and the eternal laws of gravity. Its
prescience grows in this current environment of
superpowers taking on religious factions.
Contact: Pythagoras Film / Deborah Stratman
PO Box 6167, Chicago, IL 60680 t: 312 243 1227 e:
delta@pythagorasfilm.com
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