The author tells about the Hazrati Mavlono Mausoleum in Tajikistan and about how utter strangers and pilgrims become close and open to each other when they get into another dimension.

The work tells about the giant statue of Buddha, found during excavations in Ajina Tepe (7th century), which is now kept in the Tajikistan National Antiquity Museum. The author tries to underline the idea of tolerance: the Tajik, mostly Moslems, respect traditions and arts of their ancestors, as well as the confession, which is now alien to them.

The film is about problems of the young people in the Tajikistan capital.

Nirvana, wanted by a modern human being, who is tired out of stresses, dissatisfaction, and social and political problems of the edge of the centuries, and who just wants to be himself at least for a minute, is as illusory as a dream.

The artist is interested in the rites related to the cult of Saint Sultan Vais with the focus of pilgrims' attention being the sacred basin with holy fishes. The film was shot in the Xorazm region around the ancient Khiva, at the sanctuary mazars Sultan Bobo and Sultan Vais, near the burial vault Chinar Bobo and an old cemetery. The turning of earthenware fishes into living creatures is like the infinite pulse of the animate nature.

Sacred locations, which always attract a human being, seem to underline the interdependence of the mental search and existence in the reality filled with sharp edges of incomprehension. In other words, the film is about the problem of relevance and attention to the individual and to the society on the whole.

The film is about the author's impression of visiting the sacred Suleiman Mount near Osh in Kyrgyzstan.

The water and the fish as its symbol are of special value in the dry and hot climate of Central Asia. The fishes are a living embodiment of the sacral idea of a spring, a waterfall, a brook, or a mountain river not just in a steppe or a desert, but also in a city.

Movements of an ordinary man melting bitumen to make a roof create an image of a modern urban shaman worshiping the fire to the sounds of drums.

The ground for the film was a story of an artist and a place he had created for himself and, as it turned out later, for other people as well, because he was representing everyone in his territory. It means that everyone who is going to accept this space can become "untouchable"…

The film is about overcoming everlasting difficulty of rising upward to the personal perfection and to the unity with the absolute, if there is an understanding that the absolute does exist. When a human being reaches the height as was determined by his fate, when the necessity of the further spiritual and physical rise cease, he needs to rise again, may be just virtually, analysing his way and the mistakes he made and, basically, reliving all his life.

The life of a human being, geared by the Most High, lasts in whirling of the changing moments until the winding mechanism stops. The variety of time and space (the background for the action are steppes, mountains, and old streets of Bukhara and Samarkand) uncovers the dualism of the eternity and life instants).

A game, started as a trivia, turns into a gesture of respect to austere and clear Baikal Lake.

The most part of historical and memorial places in Bishkek was created in the middle of the last century. A monument to Zhoomart Bokonbaev (1910<0x2013>1944), a poet, playwright, and front-line soldier, was set up in 1946 at the intersection of Dzerzhinsky Boulevard and Bokonbaev Street by sculptor O. Manuilova, who had been studying in the Stroganov school together with Mayakovsky. The bronze sculpture mysteriously disappeared at the end of the last century when non-ferrous metals were massively exported from the country. The bust have not been found as it was, most probably, melted and sold to China. Thus, this memorial place has found its contradictory, harsh and not a made-up story, and we are now observing origination of an object, which bears the sacral signs. The government today is busy with reshaping the history by creating new monumental symbols. The authors of the film have redoubled the process of inventing new mythology. So a namesake of the hero, an artist Gamal Bokonbaev, has decided to stand for a while on the vacant base. This anecdote has been already fixed in the conscience of townsfolk: the sacralisation of a location from where the monument had been stolen is being continued.

A man, by virtue of certain circumstances, often creates his own sacral places and becomes their integral part. A landscape remains, whereas men come and go. A caravanserai on the Bishkek<0x2013>Osh route has a popular name Paris. People with their own rules and customs reach from the dark mountain road to the light, where they can find everything a traveller needs. Other people serve them and work day and night to provide their guests with everything they need. The fidgety and illuminated caravanserai has become for wayfarers the centre of civilization, which is associated in unspoiled minds of our people with the capital of France.

Sacrificing animals was always tied to religious rites, many of which were preserved till our days, though changed and simplified. This happens primarily in cities, which don't provide spaces to perform a ritual in detail. In Bishkek suburbs, there is a place where young people specializing in cutting carcass come forward to buyers who choose meat for their family and ritual fests. The author is interested in both the fact of such a service and the place where it is offered.

During all his life, a man builds his environment, not perfectly ideal, but important and filled with dear and memorable places. There are places, which are honoured by various ethnic and religious groups. Having become sacral, a place undergoes modifications in both space and time and turns out to be a witness of many events in the history of the mankind. It never looses its importance for those living today and tomorrow. However, while honouring sacred things, a man keeps searching and trying to leave his footprint on the earth, which is his home, actually. The film was shot at the Issyk Ata, Kegetti, Barskoon, Boom, Ak Suu, Karakol, Issyk Ata Tuyuk ravines, Zheti Oguz, at the Issyk Kul Lake, and the Buran Museum.

Kochkor valley is an ancient sacred place in Kyrgyzstan inhabited by the spirit of Kochkor Ata, an elder in white clothes, who hides small horns under a cap. This natural rock wall is a place of worship of those diseased, wretched, and confused, as well as of childless women. Shamans, byubyu, bakhshy, and emchi-demchi perform their rituals here on Thursday nights. This is a place where ancient paganism and Moslem traditions concrete.

Duplicates of the Eiffel tower in Central Asian capitals were erected under promotional campaigns of shops equating their services to the European ones (at least!). However, these constructions are objects of sightseeing by mainly Philistines who would hardly ever achieve their dreams of visiting Paris. And what about those who are not obsessed with this idèe fixe? What are thoughts of an artist who are passing by these monuments to the bad taste, which have become sacral perforce? Why do we need this false Europe and how we can fight against it? Maybe, we should just pay no attention, bury ourselves in everyday problems and then, like a rural tourist, take a keepsake picture in this quasi-Paris part of a city while saying ourselves again and again that the time will come and we will be there.

The materials for this work are a human body and landscapes. The icon-like portraits of naked women, the number of which grows from time to time, are shown against a background of Kazakh graves called mazars, which remind of a phantasmal ancient city. Mazars had their specific functions in the steppe as they served as a refuge for late wayfarers.

Jihad refers primarily to the inner struggle of being a person of virtue, in order to place ourselves in "the arms of the wind".

A ram is a totem animal of nomads. People walking up the road talk to severed ram heads and kick them, sing and finally "turn" into rams themselves. This is what is happening to us now in our reality.

When considering their native locus Rudny, the authors conclude that the culture and mythology of the city are completely based on the Sokolovsko-Sarbaisky mining association, which is located there. The association consists of many enterprises, which produce and treat iron ore, including a subsurface mine, some factories, and quarries. The most known of the latter is a huge Sarbaisky quarry that is a world known iron ore producer. The citizens call it lovingly the "Pit". The Pit produces loadstone (a complex oxide of ferrous and ferric iron related to spinels (ferrospinel), which is one of the main iron ores). As is proved by its name (Rudny means "of ore" in Russian), the city is a community of miners who serve the Pit, and the Sokolovsko-Sarbaisky association is its core. If the Pit succeeds in its vital activities, all townspeople do in theirs. The mother Pit provides with work, i.e. with food and roof, with money to the municipal and national budget, and grants a special mining identity and proud of communicating with the mighty deity. About ten years ago, when there were a lot of rumours about closing the Pit, many townspeople suffered from depression and apocalyptic moods. Local telecasts and press were praising the "beauty and grandeur" of the Pit, the grand Sarbaisky mine. Thus, the Pit is undoubtedly a sacral object of this geographical locus (the Sun of Rudny). Moreover, each townsman, irrespective of whether he is marked by the Pit sign or not, bears a small part of its power and energy. The Pit enlightens, inspires, and gives magic power. This is illustrated in the final shots: the enlightenment (one of those enlightened is a magnetic man, a personification of magnet), and telekinesis zapping. And there rises a question about the deity nature. What is hidden there, in the ground? What have we dug out? Where are we going? What is that a man reaches when digging too deep? The authors leave these questions rhetorical.

From its very foundation in 1957, Rudny was almost deprived of eidosphere: grey bricks of the Khrushchev and Brezhnev five-store houses, grey chappy asphalt, grey monuments symbolising the hard work of miners. In the last two or three months, the city has changed beyond recognition because of the forthcoming fiftieth anniversary of the main city enterprise, the Sokolovsko-Sarbaisky mining association. The city is now painted in bright and joyful colours with the main changes made to the arterial road of the city, Lenin Street, which is almost mystically connected to the Lenin Street group that shot the film right there. The new colours of Rudny are predominantly the state blue and yellow, and it can be said that the city resembles now a post-modern Temple of the Sky and the Sun. However, the townsfolk who look everyday at yellow-and-blue benches, columns, fences, litterbins, and sewer hatches, feel themselves to be in an unreal sacral area. They try to preserve clearness and brightness of their city and become like the Temple acolytes. Their marches in coloured streets remind of mysterious ceremonies. They should not worry as they have the Sky and the Sun underfoot.

Southern Kazakhstan is filled with mythology. A local legend tells that the Noah's Ark had pulled up in the Kazgurt Mountains. Not far from Kazgurt there is an ancient city Sairam, which preserves mausoleums of many local saints. The Silk Way has been crossing this place. The 20th century contributed its mite to mythologisation of the region. In Shymkent, there are monuments to the Red Tractor and to the fighting machine; in the children's park there is a monument to the military helicopter, which has been reequipped to become a caf<0x00E9>. The pipes of an oil refinery, and tyre, lead, and phosphorous plants, which pollute atmosphere, are new minarets of the industrialisation. The city has its own Egyptian pyramids; however, they are black because of the waste and slags of the lead plant. Local Noah's descendants live in poisoned environment while connecting the ancient and modern times and symbolising the life after the Flood.

The film was shot at Lenin alley in Aksu (former Ermak) in the Pavlodar region. The age of high tech and the freedom of speech and democracy provide for replacing symbols of the past with symbols of the present. However, they never provide for fundamental changes in the society, maybe because of deep-seated traditions. In the Soviet times, when there were almost no churches and mosques and when there was no God, as we were told in school, there nevertheless were cultural values of the same order. For example, Lenin played the role of God. They have even built a temple in Moscow, the Lenin Mausoleum, notable due to daily long queues of pilgrims who wished to look at the saint. My grandmother told me in childhood, "Eat well and you'll be like Lenin," and read aloud the book Lenin's Life. And my teacher told us without any blush that Lenin died and his body is in the mausoleum on the Red Square in Moscow. Who or what should we have believed? No one asked at that time. It was accepted that Lenin was alive, though everyone knew where his body was lying. Everything has changed by now completely. My grandmother goes to church, reads the Bible, and says, "Have you no fear of God? Lenin has died." Thank goodness, I haven't met my teacher as I expect her to tell me something like that. I believe in God a little, if I can say so. I say "a little", because He did not exist for me until a moment. And I don't know what my trust in Lenin is. It may be a little more, because I was taught it in the most sensitive age. In my work, I make my Hadj to my own Mecca in the search for God (or Lenin) where I finally find him.

The Mangistau land in the Western Kazakhstan remembers 362 saints who lived in 10-17th centuries and who for the most part were Sufis. The film was shot in Beket Ata, Sholpan Ata, and Koshkar Ata.

The film was shot in the Western Kazakhstan, near the Sherkala Mount, whose name is translated as the "sorrowful city".

The hero of the film has decided to stay alone with himself. His imagination paints fantastic pictures and images of his past and, probably, future. His subconsciousness is open, and a viewer travels with the smoker along the sacral locations of his outer and inner worlds…

My grandfather was a captain of a big Soviet ship named "Kommuna". My inheritance from him included the sailing directions for the Aral Sea. However, it so happened that the sea has dried out and there is no more the Soviet country, and no "Kommuna". What was left are the maps of the country and the sea, which exist no more,<0x2013>metaphors worth oriental poetry.

The trilogy includes "Universal Sorrow", "Death Of the Hero", and "Love For the Eternal". The myth, pathos, and poetry touch people on the raw… How far can run an artist when using these tools for his own purposes, and how does it influence the perception of the reality?

The film was shot in two locations of the Western Altai: at the Sibiny Lakes and in a preserve at the Lineisky range. In 1654, Tayiji Ablai built a fortification near the Sibiny Lakes with the Buddhist Temple of Ablaikit and formulary library inside. Ablai's position among other Jun Ghar feudalists seems to have been not so strong. In 1660, Ablaikit was sieged by Esen Khan, Ablai's own brother. From 1663 to 1665, Khans fought vehemently for the superiority, and the power has finally passed to Sengge from the Durben family who was a son of Baatur Khong Tayiji. His main rival Chechen dragged Ablai in this struggle. In 1671, Sengge was killed by Chechen and Tzoba Batyr, and famous Galdan Boshukhtu claimed dominion over the Oyirad. In the same year, Galdan conquered Ablaikit and forced Ablai to leave the upper Irtysh. We know nothing about the details of the siege. During the storm, just the upper floor of a house, where lamas lived, burnt out in Ablaikit. Galdan, who have just resigned from lamas in Tibet, left the temple as it was with its library and fortifications to be slowly destroyed by time. There is a legend that during the siege Ablai drowned a gold life-size statue of Buddha in the lake. There was no research of the ruins of the Ablaikit monastery. There are a lot of things that people don't know, and for a man to see just a part of these, he will need an intention and make an effort…

There are people who visit sacred locations out of curiosity, for their own pleasure or cure or something else. There are also people who live near such places and have their own notion of their holiness. The ancient tradition (though, why ancient?) says that if you want you desire to come true, you should take a rag and tie it up on the sacred tree or throw a coin to the sacred source. The most part of people who visit Kieli Bulak, located in the Tau Turgen ravine near Almaty, do these things. However, there is a boy Dauren who lives in this place and pays no attention to all these ancient and non-ancient customs. He just wants to live and to live well. That is why he simply gets out coins from the source. Could you blame him?

The film is an observation of the life of Turkestan, its people and outskirts, and its main sacred place, the Hodja Ahmed Yasavi Mausoleum, during five years.

The name of this island came from a Buryat word "olkhan" that means "dry". The island lacks precipitation and the most part of its slopes, free of forests, is covered with the steppe plants. Olkhon is the only island of Baikal where people live for a long time. It is known for its cultural and historical memorials that were kept from the times of the Mongol shamans and ancient Turks.

This is a scientific audio and visual experiment with a person's own body in a limited "sacral" place where the authors had to be both laboratory technicians and reactors. Using anything available, they tried to create images that would frighten or avert people. While the artists are calm, they are not ugly, however, once they become angry and let out their emotions, everything goes out and their mimicry reflects the inner condition. We are bio, while our environment is toilet. The laboratory is a sacred place to take experiments on psychics and man's anatomy.

The film was shot in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of China and is a virtual attempt by the author to live the life of all his ancestors who inhabited this land.