Gugara

Co-directors Andrzej Dybczak and Jacek Naglowski's sobering anthropological documentary Gugara profiles the Evenks, a scarcely-known tribe in the deep heart of Siberia that is not only dying off with alarming rapidity, but quickly losing its culture and fading into social oblivion for that reason. Naglowski and Dybczak travel to the Evenk-populated village of Tutonchany, with a particularly strong emphasis on profiling the Hukachar family (whose son is now employed as a physical education instructor) and another clan where the daughter has become a born-again Christian and the patriarch has withered into a drunken ne'er-do-well. The filmmakers suggest, none too subtly, that the arrival of Christianity and western mass culture (evidenced via the family's TV sets) have each contributed to the decimation of the local culture. The title, when translated, refers to the sound of reindeer bells