From Kazakhstan, a Cinematic Window onto the Silk Road
Marco Polo is one of those rare figures whose names are universally recognized even while the reasons for their fame are misunderstood. Most contemporary Americans think of him as a sort of explorer or merchant – if not merely as the namesake of a certain popular children’s game. The Silk Road
of Marco Polo, a new documentary film commissioned by the Ministry of Culture and Sport of the Republic of Kazakhstan, making its American premiere on Thursday, June 8 at the National Arts Club as a part of this year’s Annual Russian Heritage Month®, sheds light on the man and legacy behind the mellifluous name, revealing him to be a true man of the world as well as an important writer. Directed by Alexey Kamenskiy and Han Sen Tian, the film opens in a Genoese prison, where Polo is being held for his role in a military conflict between Genoa and his native Venice. While in captivity, he meets Rusticello da Pisa, a writer who convinces him to commit his story to writing. By this time, Polo had already travelled widely throughout the East, including the nations of Central Asia and the forbidding Celestial Empire of China. His record of these places and peoples, deemed The Book of the Marvels of the World but commonly referred to as The Travels
of Marco Polo would ensure his fame throughout the centuries. Its impact was sweeping and immediate. “For a long time, Asia had been hidden from European eyes,” writes Andrey Khazbulatov, the film’s producer and General Director of Kazakhstan’s Research Institute of Culture. “With his book, Marco became one of the first sources of knowledge about China and Central and Southeast Asia.” From there, the Silk Road follows the book’s example and becomes a showcase for the diversity and sophistication of Medieval Asia as well as a window into its author’s unique life. “Marco was not a simple explorer or merchant,” Khazbulatov maintains. “Merchants don’t write these kinds of books.” Indeed, the route Polo travelled was actually discovered earlier by his father and uncle, Niccoló and Maffeo Polo, who were invited to China from Persia by an emissary of the country’s Mongol ruler, Kublai Khan. On making their return some years later, they brought along young Marco, who became a statesman in his own right, serving as a trusted advisor in Kublai’s court. For many Europeans, China was a distant, nearly mythological abstraction; such access to its inner workings would have been unthinkable. The commercial exchange that followed created not only economic ties, but cultural ones as well. The film also follows Polo’s lead in cataloguing the richness of Central Asia. In his writings, he provides a description of yurts and speaks of drinking mare’s milk with a group of nomads, an event recreated in the film. Polo’s story continues to hold resonance for the region today. Home to representatives of over 130 nationalities, contemporary Kazakhstan prides itself on the sort of diversity Polo celebrated. “This information about the traditions, rituals, and ways of life of the inhabitants of the steppe is important because it gives us the possibility of weaving new information into an integrated picture of Medieval Kazakhstan,” says Khazbulatov. He also speaks to the importance of the cinematic medium in drawing people into this history. “Having seen this film, viewers will certainly want to recreate this legendary journey, making discoveries of their own in the twenty-first century. We hope that our historical and scientific films will garner interest not only among Kazakhstani viewers, but among Americans as well.” It’s worth noting that back in 2015, another popular scientific film from Kazakhstan “Under the Eye of the Eternal Sky” has made its major U.S. debut at George Washington University in Washington and Robert De Niro’s Tribeca film studio in New York.