Heat

[Зной]

(1963) USSR

Directed by Larisa Shepit'ko

Written by Iosif Ol'shanskii, Irina Povolotskaia, and Larisa Shepit'ko. Cinematography by Iurii Sokol and Vladimir Arkhangel'skii. Music by Roman Ledenev. With Bolotbek Shamshiev, Nurmukhan Zhanturin, and Klara Iusupzhanova.

In Russian with English subtitles

Based on the story "Camel's Eye" by Kirgiz writer Chingiz Aitmatov.
Kemal' is seventeen years old. He arrives in a small village, where an authoritarian Soviet bureaucrat, Abakir, makes all the decisions. Kemal' cannot live according to the rigid rules and violates the established hierarchy.

An allegory of the "true" revolutionary spirit versus the cold rigidity of Stalinism–and also on some level, a bit of a cowboy showdown.
– Michael Zilberman, "Soviet Cinema: Revolution in the Revolution" series, NY, Nov. 2000

In Heat, desert is both physical and metaphysical landscape. Existential drama is one of distinctive features of director's style. – Andrei Shemiakin, Larisa Shepit'ko, http://www.km.ru

Like a true person of the sixties, Shepit'ko started with the films dealing with social and ethical problems.
– Neia Zorkaia, The Illustrated History of Soviet Cinema, p. 253.

Larisa Shepit'ko (1938–1979) graduated from the All-Union State Filmmaking Institute in 1963. She always referred to Aleksandr Dovzhenko as her mentor. Heat is Shepit'ko's graduation project and first feature film. Her short film Homeland of Electricity (1967), from the story by Andrei Platonov, was shot as part of the portmanteau film The Beginning of an Unknown Century to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The film was banned for twenty years and was finally released only in 1987 during Gorbachev's perestroika. In the 1970s, strong religious symbolism dominates Shepit'ko's works, for example her 1976 picture The Ascent, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Shepit'ko died in a car accident in 1979.