Educational Media Reviews Online

This film follows a traveling circus family through several Central Asian republics of the former USSR. Scenes alternate between performances where the children perform various feats of daring and scenes of the family in their travels. Cramped in the van that is their home, the various members of the family appear to spend their time bickering and fighting when not performing. The performances feature one of the older children picking up a 70 pound weight with his teeth. He then holds the weight in his teeth while his father whacks it with a sledgehammer, a scene that is painful to watch. The other children walk on broken glass and tumble about without being harmed.

It is difficult to tell what director Sergey Dvortsevoy wants us to see in this family. In the 52 minutes we spend with them, we don't learn the family members' names, their histories, or the secrets of their show. Vast amounts of film time are spent showing the barren landscape the family travels through, including two lengthy shots of the van driving away. Certainly, the entertainment the family seeks to provide is a stark contrast to the harsh land, and the land itself is not unlike what their lives seem to the viewer: difficult and barren. The family members, even the children, don't laugh or smile while performing or at leisure.

Subtitling proves to be a problem throughout the program. In many cases, the white letters are placed on a background so light they are unreadable. There is also more than one instance in which one suspects that not all that is said is appearing in the subtitles, leaving one to wonder what has been left out.

This film is not for all collections, although it does provide a glimpse into a geographical region we in the United States don't have much familiarity with and a vastly different way of life. Recommended for large documentary collections and institutions with strong collections on life in the former Soviet republics.