Byambasuren Davaa is a unique film director…. still now she has made only two films – “the weeping camel” & “The cave of the yellow dog”. Her films are unique for its very gently, subtle , uniquely fluid, organic, meandering way of storytelling.
She was born in Mongolia and studied in Germany. Her both films are about the vanishing culture of nomad people in Mongolia. But interestingly she used very different perspective to tell the story. In her own words : My aim was to document a vanishing culture. So as a film-maker, I’m in control of my language, but I wanted to step back and let them tell their story from their perspective, so in a sense I created a filmic language that would enable them to do that. They live quietly, and in a subtle way.
In the first film is about nomad family in Mongolia and one of their camels. The camel is not ready to accept its new born baby. The mother camel is not allowing the baby camel to drink its milk. So the family tries all possible ways to solve the issue but fails. Then according to their tradition if a particular music is played the mother camel will change its mind. So they bring two artists from faraway place to play the music. And astonishingly the music works...!! The camel starts crying and it allows the baby to drink its milk.
The story is very simple and close to nomad tradition. The second film is also about another nomad family but this time the main focus is on a child and her dog. All the characters are from real life and no script was used to produce both these films. For both this movies, she spent more than 2 months with the original nomad family. After some days the family was not worried abt the camera and presence of the team. So she created some situation in which the characters reacted naturally and she filmed those scenes. So there was no “Action” and “Cut” s during the shooting. It was really long, painstaking process of film making but result was very amazing. The characters were fitted with each situation in the film and it was so natural.
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