E-Mail This Article to a Friend MUJAAN

Sans bombast, sans special effects, BU grad Chris McKee’s documentary on Mongolian nomads traces the building of a gir, a traditional rounded hut, on the isolated Mongolian steppes. McKee eschews narrative explanation, and there’s almost no dialogue; instead, wood gets chopped, sheep get sheared (and slaughtered), wool gets beaten with sticks and turned to felt. There’s a rhythm to the piece, a meditative pulse provided by the chopping, the swatting, and a subtle chanting soundtrack. No detail is too small and no detail is not urgent: in the midst of slicing open a sheep, when the entrails start to bubble out of the incision in a white-blue bulge and the craftsman has extended his hand to grab the heart to cut off the flow of blood to the brain, the film cuts to the worker flicking an insect off his shoulder and a butterfly pumping its wings on a piece of wood. McKee shows us a world almost as different as the galaxy far, far away, but this one is slow, unpretentious, and so calming. (25 minutes)