Getting “reel” remote

Oregon still has some places where population density is measured in square miles per person rather than people per square mile.

But they can’t compare with the remoteness of the places depicted in today’s films.

Nor can many movies match the excellence of these award-winning examinations of native cultures.

Two students studying documentary filmmaking in Germany, Byambasuren Davaa (Mongolian) and Luigi Falorni (Italian), made The Story of the Weeping Camel (2003).

Camel’s part of the Mongolian Gobi Desert is about the same latitude as Seattle but has an average temperature of minus 14.5 F. in January (Bend’s is 31.1) and 71 F. in July (Bend 63.7). Mongolia is more than six times the size of Oregon.

Oregon has 32 people per square mile. Mongolia has four.

Mongolia’s 2.7 million people share a mere 320,000 telephones but possess two million horses, 12 million sheep, and 12 million goats. Their camel ownership is declining with only about 256 thousand Bactrian two-humped native camels surviving. Camels, which can live to be 50, still are prized animals for transportation, dried-dung fuel, wool, meat, and milk.

You and your children will fall in love with the movie’s lead camel and her colt.

Camel is a documentary about a contemporaryfour-generation nomad family who live in three beautiful gers (yurts) and survive by raising animals. The white camel birth and ensuing drama really happened while the crew was filming this family. Viewers get to witness a disappearing way of life led by Mongolians since, under Ghengis Khan, they conquered China and influenced countries as far west as Hungary and Poland.

That expansive Mongolian influence shows up in Dersu Uzala (1975, available at Deschutes Public Library).

V.K. Arseniev, one of the world’s most famous geographers, surveyed the Russian Far East in the early 1900s and wrote many books and articles about his findings. Three of those books, one of which is titled “Dersu Uzala,” provide the film’s true story.

Khabarovsky Krai, north and west of Vladivostok, is more than four times the size of Oregon with five people per square mile, a January average temperature of 7 F. and July 72 F.

Like Oregon, the Territory has a number of wilderness preserves. Khabarovsk (population 700,000) is Portland, Oregon’s sister city and the administrative center for the entire Russian Far East.

The real Dersu Uzala, a Goldi hunter with expert survival skills, twice guided Arseniev’s survey team. “Goldi” is another name for the Udege native people who speak Tungu languages related to Mongolian and Alaskan Aleut.

Made in Russian by a Japanese director, the renowned Akira Kurosawa, Dersu provides a stunning examination of the rugged landscape, Dersu’s culture, Arseniev’s own life, and the deep friendship that developed between the two culturally disparate men.

Arseniev learns about animist philosophy from Dersu Uzala, who believed in the spirituality of natural phenomena and theirkinship with human souls which exist before and afterdeath.

Inuits, who migrated to Alaska and Canada from Asia some 5,000 years ago, do not share Dersu’s language but they demonstrate similar animistic views and survival skills.

Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001) is the first Inuktitut language film. It was made by the people of Nunavut, a 733,600-square-mile territory created by Canada in 1999 around the Hudson’s Bay region.

Fast Runner, based on an Inuit murder mystery legend, features the people’s traditional nomadic way of life. Its director, Zacharia Kunuk, was raised in a sodhouse with five brothers and sisters.

His family didn’t use money and survived by using a dogsled to hunt.

You cannot drive a car to Nunavut and, except in settlements, you can only drive in it by snowmobile or dogsled in the winter. In the summer there is too much water so you have to go wherever by boat.

Nunavut has more than 25 square miles per person.

The Territory has three national and several territorial parks but only 26 settlements. Iqaluit, the capital, has 6,000 people. The smallest settlement has five. Iqaluit’s mean MAXIMUM temperature during January is minus 8.5 F. and in July 52.9.

Fast Runner is not suitable for young children but will fascinate teenagers.

All three films exemplify Dersu’s belief in the kinship between human souls and nature. They make us understand why “Siberia” is the Tungu word for “earth” and “Nunavut” means “our land” in Inuktitut.

Camel’s Mongolian director Davaa said about her people, “They understand that we, as humans, have to adjust to nature and not the other way around. That is the philosophy of the nomads.”