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BRIDE KIDNAPPING IN KYRGYZSTAN
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Petr Lom
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| The first film ever to document the ancient
custom of bride kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan. When a Kyrgyz man
decides to marry, he often abducts the woman he has chosen.
Typically, he takes several friends, hires a car, stakes out
his bride-to-be's movements, and snatches her off the street.
The woman is taken to the groom's family home. A delegation
is then sent to her family to inform them of the kidnapping.
The abducted woman is kept until someone from her family arrives
to determine whether she will marry her kidnapper. The level
of consent and the familiarity of the bride with the groom vary.
Sometimes the kidnappings are consensual - the bride is engaged
to the groom and agrees to the kidnapping which is here a merely
playful ritual. In many other cases however, the bride does
not want to marry her suitor, or has never even met him before.
Recent studies estimate that about half of all marriages in
Kyrgyzstan today are conducted through kidnapping, and that
in half of these cases a woman is forced into a marriage. This
documentary follows the dramatic stories of four of non-consensual
kidnappings. . |
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Screenplay Petr Lom
Photography (colour) Petr Lom
Editing Anatoly Sivoha, Petr Lom
Music
Rosa Amanova
Production Petr Lom
Year of production 2004
Running time 51'
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Petr Lom
Petr Lom was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1968. He grew up in Canada and received his Ph.D. in political philosophy from Harvard in 1997. He taught at several European universities, wrote a dull scholarly book on skepticism, and translated a beautiful book of Czech philosophy. He gave up his career in the University in 2004 to pursue a full-time career as a documentary filmmaker. Bride Kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan is his first film.
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