Kurt
Storyboard Text
- A young couple is sitting peacefully in their living room, enjoying each other's company at dinner
- Moscow, Soviet Union1938
- Suddenly, NKVD officers come to drag them out of the apartment calling the husband a traitor of the country.
- An NKVD officer is shown interrogating the wife, Nadezhda (Nadya).
- I truly do not know what you are talking about! We are simple people, my husband is a school teacher, I am a nurse. We have not done anything wrong!
- So Nadezhda Ignatyeva, what anti-soviet deeds has your husband done and told you about?
- You don't know? Then rot in camp!
- An old cargo train is moving in a remote area
- The wagon inside is packed with poorly dressed, coughing, shivering women. They are silent. Nadya is among them. A close up of her face is shown, her gaze full of despair and hopelessnnes as she looks emptily into the darkness of the shabby wagon
- The train arrives. The women step out of the train looking around with fear. The commander shouts at them to be faster. A woman trips, Nadya helps them her up to her feet.
- Almolinsk, KazakhstanThe Akmolinsk Camp for Wives ofTraitors of the Motherland
- The women are working outside, gathering reeds for the winter. They are occassionally shouted at for being slow. The women are malnourished, very thin, appearing sick and frail. Their clothes are torn and dirty. Some women appear to be pregnant. Among other women Nadya is trying to overcome her exhaustion and continue working.
- A Kazakh family of horse herders from a village nearby approaches the gate of the camp. The kids throw what appears to be white rocks at the working women. The parents and children are silent and serious.
- The rocks hit the women. They look hurt and offended. Nadya falls down on her knees and whispers in despair: for what? The commander starts hysterically laughing at them.
- Even these savages can't stand you!
- The Kazakh family, however, is not laughing. They solemnly turn around and start leaving. The girl looks back with sympathy and leaves.
- Nadya, having noticed the girl's look, picks up the rock and smells it. She starts crying and gathering the "rocks". She puts them in her pockets.
- Night time. Packs of women are sleeping on floor. Under is them a thin layer of staw. Nadya wakes up a Kazakh fellow camp woman, Gulnur, beside her and shows her the "rocks". After their conversation Nadya shares it with her and they silently nibble on the piece of Kurt, occassionally wiping away tears from their cheeks. The camera zooms out to show other sleeping women and through a window zooms out of the barrack, captures the whole camp from an aerial view and stops
- (Gasps and starts sobbing) This is KURT. It is dried salty cottage cheese. It is very nutritious. They were risking their lives!
- Gulnur, you are Kazakh, right? Look what the local kids were throwing at us today. It smells like cheese.
- The Akmolinsk Camp for Wives of Traitors of the Motherland had existed from 1938 to 1950. In the camp women were beaten up, raped and forced to engage in hard labour in the cold for long hours. Most of these womens' husbands have been murdered, their children sent to orphanages where many did not survive the harsh conditions. In order to build this camp local people, Kazakhs, were deported elsewhere, stripped of their cattle and other belongings. In many accounts of these horrendous events the women state that these little pieces of Kurt have either prolonged or saved their lives and that they had remained thankful to the local people until the end...
- With the camp in the background from an aerial view, the text appears
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