Builders of the Naryn Cascade. Television and Cinema of Kyrgyzstan in the 70s - Early 80s. Part - 16

Reflection on the Screen of the Process of Designing New Hydroelectric Power Stations

Through the films shot by Vidugiris at the Toktogul Hydroelectric Power Station: “Three Answers to the Mountains” (1963), “The Overlap” (1966), “Naryn Diary” (1971), one can trace the progress of the construction of a bold and uniquely conceived hydroelectric station in the mountains. However, “production events” never concerned him for their own sake.

Even such spectacular, rare, and dearly cherished by every film chronicler events as the transportation of bulldozers by cable across the Naryn, the work of the first climbers clearing the slopes of stones to ensure the safety of the builders below. And even the damming of the Naryn and the pouring of the first concrete into the dam of the future station are events of historical significance. Chronicle — for what purpose? Event — what lies behind it? Work — who is behind it? Thus, logically and naturally, Vidugiris distanced himself from the serious miscalculations of many of our documentarians, who lose sight of the Human behind the meters, percentages, mechanisms, and events...

...Alexander Ageevich Tkalichev — an excavator operator from the construction of the Toktogul Hydroelectric Power Station. For 32 years, Tkalichev has been building power stations across the country, and he is soon to retire. On Alexander Ageevich's festive suit is the Order of Lenin, and in the cabin of the excavator is a portrait of Gagarin. Everyone in the hydroconstruction town knew Tkalichev. And the children especially: Ageevich is building a carousel. A real one! Like in the big city far from Kara-Kul.

No one forced or asked Tkalichev to build a carousel. He gave himself this task — after all, he couldn't just play with the kids on the road! He solves problems in higher mathematics with only a primary education. No one asked or forced Tkalichev to sit up at night studying higher mathematics. He gave himself this task: “It was hard for my son. What kind of father would I be if I didn’t help my son?” This is one of those people whom Vidugiris was amazed to see once in his life, and, growing up with them, brought to the screen...

A. V. ...The essence of cinema changes every day, its language becomes more complex because the viewer himself is changing, his perception...

R. X. Let’s not forget about the universal “specialization” of today’s viewer: he is not only a moviegoer but also a television viewer. The influence of television, especially its documentary and publicistic programs (both good and not so good), cannot be overlooked. Here is one vivid example that we may not always notice precisely because of its vividness. Over a decade and a half — a considerable period for a periodic TV publication — the program “Vremya” has firmly entered our daily routine, into our evening life, and consequently, into the viewer's consciousness. An informational television program in which the path from fact to image is attempted by practically every audiovisual message, the usual size of which, by the way, equals one-fifth of a documentary single-part film... These attempts, sometimes quite successful, occur before the eyes of millions of television viewers.

Every evening. Every morning. Such direct communication with the process of documentary-imaginative thinking has significantly raised the culture of the viewer's perception of documentary cinema.

A. V. Today we edit seamlessly, without transitions, the present, the past, and even the future, we show dreams, and the viewers understand everything. In cinema, the author’s position is very important because our cinema is also a fighter. The position of a kind of “mirror holder” in cinema (“I’m not involved, I’m just holding the mirror, and in it, you see yourselves”) is, for me, the most acceptable.

Often, filmmakers, especially young ones, argue among themselves about whom to make films for? For the viewer, for the House of Cinema, or “for history”... The debate is not as naive as it seems at first glance. Let’s not hide it — each of us goes through the art of being complex, mysteriously incomprehensible, super-modern — “I am from that, from the next century.” Creating such an aura around oneself is not particularly difficult. And one can earn a certain fame from it. But should we think about recognition in the next century when today we need to solve so many urgent problems?

R. X. Alexander Spiridonovich Shchetina, an old agronomist from the “New Path” collective farm in the Issyk-Kul region, grew an orchard on the rocky slopes of the Kungoi Ala-Too. For centuries, this half-dead land did not know the weight of ripe apples. Alexander Ageevich Tkalichev, the excavator operator from the Toktogul Hydroelectric Power Station, crafted a carousel for the children of Kara-Kul after his shift. No one forced these heroes of “Those Who Turned to the Sun” and “Naryn Diary” to do what they did. Like any gift, the talent to live for others, the generosity of the soul is certainly not encountered at every turn.

A. V. There are many dear people to me whom I owe everything. The longer I live, the more of them there are. You begin to understand the subtle connection between the past and the present. Sometimes a forgotten face resurfaces, a phrase or action is remembered, and you suddenly realize: it was this person — HE suggested to you, HE guided you, it was he who laid the foundation...

R. X. Your documentary, real heroes — from “PSP,” from “Those Who Turned to the Sun,” from “Vakhte,” and the Naryn duology, and the fictional heroes: the bespectacled Kubanychbek, the hunter Choro, the characters from “Men Without Women” — builders of the high-altitude power line, share one common character trait...

A. V. Reliability? I consider this quality one of the most important in a person. Especially in a man. The builders of the Naryn Cascade... Fate tested them! In 1979, the builders survived a monstrous flood that even hydrology did not anticipate. A water wave 29 meters high crashed down from the mountains and could have nullified the results of seven years of labor by a thousands-strong team. They endured! The drought of 1974, an extraordinarily active sun, the entire planet experienced this activity: millions of people perished from natural disasters, and only socialism, only our country managed to cope with the elements. Uzbekistan then harvested five million tons of cotton for the first time — a record yield! Because high in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan, a beautiful Toktogul Sea was formed! But for them, the builders of Toktogul, how hard it was — the sea, an artificial sea created by their hands, was all gone. The sea was literally thrown into the fight against drought, and the commissioning of the hydroelectric station was canceled and completely removed from the five-year plan because it would take years to fill the sea. But even in such a situation, the builders triumphed — they found an original technical solution, and the hydroelectric station, which, as we know, operates on water, on “hydro,” was launched without this very “hydro” — without the sea! They launched it right on time — as was planned earlier, even before the drought! It was an unprecedented victory.

They, the practical builders, pushed science forward. Our century, once, even before it was called the cosmic age, the age of the information explosion, was called the age of concrete.

It seemed that everything was known about concrete. The creators of Toktogul proposed a layered method of concreting, which allowed for the construction of large-scale structures high in the mountains, where only 15 years ago only athlete-climbers could go!

...Here they are, the builders of the Naryn Cascade! Talented, whole, reliable people... I owe them a debt. I still have not created the image of the engineer, designer, enthusiast who bears most of the creative problems of the era of scientific and technological revolution on his shoulders. My life is forever connected with many of them.

Leonid Azaryevich Tolkachev — he is currently leading the construction of the Zagorsk hydro-accumulating station.

Kazbek Beksultanovich Khuriev — the head of the construction of the Naryn Cascade, Vilen Sergeyevich Shangin — his chief engineer, Dmitry Bushman — deputy chief engineer, head of all climbing professions, and my first and very demanding critic...

To reflect on the screen the process of designing new hydroelectric power stations — these giant structures of modernity — to show the work of thought is an extremely difficult task; this is, if you will, terra incognita, to which cinema is only beginning to approach, despite a number of known successes.

Chronicle of the Toktogul Hydrocomplex. Television and Cinematography of Kyrgyzstan in the 70s - early 80s. Part - 15