Silent Souls, Celestial Wives has a carnivalesque and celebratory atmosphere that is largely due to the cinematography of Shandor Berkeshi. This atmosphere is sustained throughout the film, even though the implications of some episodes are quite dark. Unlike the earlier Shosho, which focused on the male priests of the Mari animist religion, Celestial Wives focuses on the life of rural Mari women. The Mari are a Finno-Ugric ethnic group within the Russian Federation. The autonomous republic of Mari-El is located in the Volga region. The Mari have preserved their Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari language—Meadow Mari, used both in Celestial [Небесные жены луговых мари] Wives and Shosho, is one of its dialects. Compared to other Finno-Ugric groups within Russia, 2012 the Russian Federation, the Mari have the Color, 106 minutes strongest sense of their cultural identity, and, Director: Aleksei Fedorchenko despite pressure from their Muslim and Screenplay: Denis Osokin Christian Orthodox neighbors, they have Camera: Shandor Berkeshi preserved their ancestral animist religion. They Production Design: Zorikto Dorzhiev, Artëm are even sometimes referred to as “the last Khabibulin pagans of Europe.” This preservation of Music: Andrei Karasev animistic beliefs and worldviews appears to Cast: Iuliia Aug, Iana Troianova, Dar'ia fascinate both Osokin and Fedorchenko. Ekamasova, Iana Esipovich, Iana Sekste, Ol'ga Celestial Wives is shot almost Degtiareva, Ol'ga Dobrina, Iaroslava exclusively in the Meadow Mari language. Pulinovich, Sergei Troegubov, Aleksandr While the film appears to have an ethnographic Ivashkevich, Vasilii Domrachev, Denis Osokin quality, Osokin and Fedorchenko not so much Producers: Aleksei Fedorchenko, Dmitrii represent, but rather create their particular Vorob'ev, Leonid Lebedev, Mikhail Shchukin fantastic worlds. Moreover, the Mari women are Production: Film Company 29 February, with played by a cast of Moscow actresses—some of the support of the Ministry of Culture of the whom are very well known. In their Russian Federation ethnographically-inflected films, Osokin and Fedorchenko have a playful attitude to reality, Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari is where supposedly “authentic” traditions turn out the third film in the tandem between the writer to be modified or invented by the authors. Denis Osokin and director Aleksei Fedorchenko. Fedorchenko’s first internationally-acclaimed The film both continues and departs from their film, First on the Moon, could be seen as an earlier works, Silent Souls and Shosho. Like example of the rare case of a Russian their previous films, Celestial Wives proved a “mockumentary.” However, like the subsequent festival success, receiving prizes at both Russian films produced in collaboration with Osokin, and international festivals. this film is less ironic than traditional Celestial Wives is united with the mockumentaries. Thus, in an interview with previous two films by its preoccupation with the Snob magazine, Fedorchenko distances his imagined Finno-Ugric culture and folklore. works from the genre. He proposes, instead, to Silent Souls recreated the no-longer-existing interpret his films as belonging to a new genre— Finno-Ugric tribe of the Meria, placing it in “fairytale documentary [dokumental’naia contemporary Russia. Shosho allegorically skazka].” In Celestial Wives, this fairytale represented a day in the life of the high priest of reality is loosely based on the traditions of the the Mari animistic religion. Unlike the elegiac Mari people. Celestial Wives is fragmentary, the indigenous, and the feminine, the film consisting of twenty-three chapters or episodes. evokes such Western art movements as The episodes are from one- to ten-minutes long Primitivism with its cultural appropriation of and can be described as belonging to such non-Western traditions. It is finally up to diverse genres as comedy, psychological drama, viewers to decide whether the film should be and thriller. The episodes tell of the lives of interpreted as a primitivist cultural appropriation Mari women of different ages. The film has the or a celebration of an alternative way of life. structure of a calendar, since the lives of its Irina Anisimova characters are represented against the background of changing seasons. Each chapter Aleksei Fedorchenko lives in Ekaterinburg. tells an incident from the life of a Mari woman, First trained as an engineer, his cinema career whose names all start with the letter “O”: Opi, began in the early 1990s, when he joined the Oshvika, Okai, Orazvi, Okalche, Ovrosi, etc. Sverdlovsk (Ekaterinburg) Studio of There are two possible and not mutually Documentary Film. His first success came with exclusive explanations for this alphabetic First on the Moon (2005). Since then he has choice. On the one hand, the letter “O” is the directed and produced both documentary and first letter of Osokin’s last name, inscribing the feature films. His works often appears at film stories’ author into the film (Osokin also appears festivals and have received numerous as a poet in one of the episodes and serves as a international awards. voice-over narrator for the Russian release). On the other hand, the letter “O” refers to the Mari Filmography: word “osh,” the word for “white” that has aesthetic, moral, and religious connotations. 2012 Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari The stories focus on the sexual lives of its 2012 The Fourth Dimension heroines in their connection to nature and the 2011 Australia (documentary) traditional way of life. The epithet “Celestial” in 2010 Silent Souls the title apparently plays with the puritan 2009 The Wind of Shuvgey (documentary) associations of this word, since it appears to 2008 Bath Day (documentary) refer to the celebration of sexuality attributed to 2007 The Railway the animistic Mari beliefs. 2006 Shosho While the women characters have 2005 First on the Moon central roles and possess supernatural and 2002 David (documentary) magical powers, the film’s representation of 2002 Children of the White Grave women is still problematic. All women are (documentary) presented as highly sexual beings, which can be seen as the work’s liberating quality in an increasingly conservative Russian culture. However, the women’s sexuality is their only defining characteristic. Represented in the traditional roles of wives and lovers, women characters lack psychological depth or any sense of social grounding or professional aspirations. The use of a particular ethnic minority as a focal point of a utopian and carnivalesque world can be seen both as liberating and problematic. Unlike most contemporary Russian films, Celestial Wives does not focus on the imperial centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg or on the Russian majority. Instead, the film celebrates the life of an ethnic minority in a rural environment. By connecting the rural, .