Magnificent historical whodunit, wherein crumbling photographs, yellowing documents, and forgotten reels of 35mm film are invested with tremendous evocative power, should find post-fest welcome on indie cable. Renowned Dutch documaker Jos de Putter travels from Azerbaijan to Austria to the U.S., chasing down who wrote the book under the pseudonym Kurban Saïd. The mystery of the author of the 1937 cult novel Ali and Nino - a recently-rediscovered Romeo and Juliet of the Caucasus - is explored in Alias Kurban Saïd. A saga of war and love and the difficult marriage of Europe and Asia in the Caucasus, this is at heart a rousing, old-fashioned, tear-jerking love story.Year: 2004 Format: 35 mm Runtime: 1 hr 20 min (80 min)
He combines starkly realistic depictions of war with colorful tableaux-wild dances, an oral poetry competition, desert camels, a meddlesome eunuch.
Said (1905-1942) was born Lev Naussimbaum in Baku, the son of a German governess and a Jewish businessman. Nino is unhappy in Persia, but Ali is reluctant to accompany her to Paris, where she flees with their infant daughter as Ali marches off to defend the short-lived Azerbaijani republic against the invading Red Army. Their marriage is a union of Western and Eastern sensibilities. Ali rebels against a tradition-bound, male-chauvinist society typified by his father's pre-wedding advice: ""Do not beat her when she is pregnant."" When war erupts, Nino, ensconced in a villa in Tehran, keeps her pregnancy by Ali a secret as long as she can. Its hero, narrator Ali Khan Shirvanshir, a Tartar and Shi'ite Muslim, flouts social convention by marrying his childhood friend, Nino Kipiani, a fair-skinned Georgian Christian. Set mostly in Azerbaijan during WWI and the Russian Revolution, this captivating novel is a cinematic, at times melodramatic, mix of romance and wartime adventure. by Random House in 1970, Said's romantic tale of young love and political upheaval in Central Asia calls for violins and handkerchiefs.
First published in 1937 and issued in the U.S.
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