Having come across a tiny hamlet lost in the steppes of Kazakhstan by chance
when flying over it, Sergei Dvortsevoi felt compelled to get to know it intimately and to take the necessary time to shoot the film.

He filmed over three months with four cameramen. Chastie’s scope is both huge and modest and ranges from panoramas of the vast wind beaten steppes, to such homely images as a cow whose head gets stuck in a milk can, women baking bread in the soil or a little boy eating sour cream.

Each of the thirty sequences that make up the film rely purely on the photography to convey the moment. Chasite is both an ethnographical poem about the region and a declaration of love for life.

Sergei Dvortsevoi was born in Kazakhstan, and studied film directing and scriptwriting in Moscow in 1993. Since then he has worked as a freelance director based in Moscow.

Filmography: Happiness (1994) Chastie (Paradise) (1995)’ Bread Day (1998); Highway (1999). His films are characterised by their dramatic yet minimalist approach to life, with its long takes and tableau-like sequences. He has said of his films, ‘I have tried to catch life as it unfolds in its very simple, sparkling beauty. For me it is the task of a film director to let life come out before the camera without trying to decorate it. Everywhere in the world, whatever the social conditions, life has these unique moments’.

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