SYNOPSICS
Pyhän kirjan varjo (2007) is a Finnish,Turkmen,English movie. Arto Halonen has directed this movie. are the starring of this movie. It was released in 2007. Pyhän kirjan varjo (2007) is considered one of the best Documentary movie in India and around the world.
A look at how multinational corporations curried favor with Saparmurat Niyazov (1940-2006), the despot of oil- and gas-rich Turkmenistan, primarily through translating "Ruhnama," his autobiographical book of cultural musings, into many languages and providing testimonials that legitimized his murderous dictatorship. Two European journalists interview Turkman dissidents and try, without success, to get statements from multinationals such as Çalik Holdings, Siemens, Daimler-Chrysler, John Deere, Caterpillar, and Bouygues Construction as to why they put business interests ahead of human rights. A Finnish CEO provides the solitary moral compass.
Pyhän kirjan varjo (2007) Trailers
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Pyhän kirjan varjo (2007) Reviews
One of the best documentaries I saw last year
This was a terrific documentary, though you have to get its sense of humor to enjoy it. The point of the film is to show how ridiculous these big international companies make themselves by doing anything and everything to flatter the dictator of Turkmenistan and help support his regime. The film is very funny, and it really brings out the hypocrisy of these corporations. At the same time, you get a strong sense of how the people in Turkmenistan are being oppressed by their government, and how the corporations help this oppression by making public statements in support of the government. The film also does a nice job of showing the surreal world that the dictator created for himself. I laughed all the way through.
Boring and surprisingly uninformative
Unfortunately for Turkmenistan's residents, Saparmurat Niyazov's dictatorship left a huge and bizarre footprint on the country. He renamed months and days of the week in honor of him and his mother, he outlawed opera and ballet... It would be excellent material for a documentary, but authors instead focus on Niyazov's book Ruhnama, which is regarded as holy scripture in Turkmenistan. The angle they chose is collaboration of Western corporations with this oil-rich country by means of translating Ruhnama to gain Niyazov's blessing. So, corporations are ready to do business with a dictator if there's money to be made. Who knew?! This revelation grasped the authors' attention so much that they spent almost the entire movie filming themselves in motel rooms, calling said corporations' PR people, unsuccessfully trying to get them to talk about their support of Niyazov. We learn very little about the book itself. The hour and the half apparently weren't enough to discuss the content of the book, its writing style, historical inaccuracies, alleged author - it was more important to record 45th phone call to the PR of some French construction company and 29th failed attempt of reaching the owner of some Turkish construction company. This documentary manages to be too long and boring and at the same time convey very little information.
Turkmenbashi
This is an excellent, if all too brief, film detailing the twisted tale of Saparmurat Niyazov, late President of the central Asian republic of Turkmenistan. Rising from the ashes of the former Soviet Union, Turkmenistan became the personal fief of this one-time loyal Communist Party apparatchik who became the focus of a personality cult and was elected, unopposed, to the Turkmen presidency in 1992. He proceeded to help himself to his homeland's wealth, skimming off a billion here and a billion there before his death in December 2006, attributed at the time to cardiac arrest, but later the subject of rumors involving poison. Director Arto Halonen has definitely taken a leaf or two from Michael Moore's playbook, but the story of Niyazov - and the 'Ruhnama', the 'Holy Book' he wrote - is so fascinating you'll forgive him the stylistic plagiarism.