The Desert of Forbidden Art

After first arriving in Uzbekistan in 1950 during an archeological and ethnographic expedition, the Russian painter, archeologist and collector Igor Savitsky spent the rest of his life in Nukus, where he founded and directed the Nukus Museum in 1966. Alongside testimonies about local arts and crafts, the museum, situated in one of the world’s poorest regions, hosts one of the rarest and most conspicuous collections of contemporary art, formed largely by drawings and paintings produced by Central Asian artists and by exponents of the Russian avant-garde which Savitsky rescued from oblivion and censorship during the Soviet regime. Savitsky’s biography and the story of his undertaking, told by Ben Kingsley, Sally Field and Ed Asner, intersect with images of various art pieces in the film (most of which have never been seen by the public) and documents and testimonials from the present, like that of Marinka Babanzarova, the Museum’s director. The film has won the Cine Golden Eagle Award, the Best Doc/Palm Beach International Film Fest and the Audience Award Beijing International Film Fest.