FILMS
CHEMODAN FILMS
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What it is?
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Who we are?
Chemodan Films, created in 2005, is a documentary film production company located in Berlin-Germany, Toronto-Canada,and Bishkek-Kyrgyzstan.
“Chemodan” (pronounciation key: “ch [like “church”]-eh-mo-dunn”) is the Russian word for “suitcase.” The word symbolizes motion, travel, and the international component of our group. One of the goals of our company is to produce documentary films on Russia, other territories/countries of the former Soviet Union, China, and other parts of the world, which can equip scholars and the larger public with contents that help them to explore the cultural, social, and political complexities of past and present.
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Chemodan Films privileges topics reflecting on the “deep country,” including geographical and social areas that are not part of the mainstream. Besides producing documentaries, Chemodan Films has also established an archival depository of original film material, both contemporary and historical.
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Some of our films can be seen at these sites:
THOMAS LAHUSEN
Producer, director, cinematographer, picture and sound editor. Director and co-owner of Chemodan Films. Taught Russian/Soviet cultural and film history at Duke University and the University of Toronto. Ph.D. in Russian Literature and History. Lausanne University, Switzerland (1982)
Filmography (direction and co-direction):
I am a sheep (2023), Freudental (2020), Screening from Within (2018), Manchurian Sleepwalkers (2018), In Search of Roubakine (2012), Meet Me in Harbin! (2011), The Interim Country (2010), The Photographer (2008), Komsomolsk mon amour (2007), The Province of Lost Film (2006).
GULZAT EGEMBERDIEVA
Researcher, filmmaker, visual artist. Co-owner of Chemodan Films..
Worked as a radio & TV jounalist at the National Kyrgyz Radio and Television Corporation. M.A. from the Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at the University of Toronto. She is presently working on her doctoral dissertation at Humboldt University in Berlin and on several documentary projects, including a film, entitled The Sigh of Memory, documenting the early Soviet opium and other narcotic plantations of Southern Kazakhstan and Northern Kyrgyzstan and their social, psychological, and environmental sequels.
Filmography (direction and co-direction):
I am a sheep (2023), Neither on the Mountain, nor in the Field (2022), Moscow Time (2020-2022), Hand Mill (2018), The Interim Country (2010). Recent work as freelance camerawoman: "I just wanted to be white", BBC "Witness to History" series. Installation "“Oral Histories as Artistic Archives – Central-Asian Counter Narratives”, Galerie Nord – Kunstverein Tiergarten. Berlin, May 2023.
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CHUBAK EGEMBERDIEV
Researcher and filmmaker. B.A. of the Humanitarian University of Bishkek. Presently completing an M.A. in Sociology at the American University of Central Asia. Permanent representative and producer of Chemodan Films in Kyrgyzstan.
Filmography (co-direction): Moscow Time (2020-2022), Neither on the Mountain, nor in the Field (producer, 2022). Documentary film in progress The Sigh of Memory.
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ROZETTE GHADERY
Cinematographer, filmmaker and graduate of MFA in Film Production from York University. Her grasp of the technical complexities of digital cinema is matched by her persistence and determination. Expertise in directing, 2D/3D cinematography, editing, producing and sound design. Has shot more than 300 documentary films around the globe. She was the first and only Iranian female DP when she moved to Canada. Rozette is also a painter and a poet. Her practice in both fields has greatly contributed to the lyrical filming style and the sensual visual approach that distinguish her film work.
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I’m So Alone With The Crowd 2012
A short feature film showing that the multiplication of electronic devices, such as cell phones, i-pods, and other such things that keep people “connected” at every moment of their lives, also produces estrangement and loneliness.
The suitcase that the main protagonist is carrying is of course the chemodan of our company
