Summary: Edited interview with Afghan film director Engineer Latif Ahmadi, intercut with archival material from two films on which he worked. He was cinematographer for Inqilab-e Sawr (The April Revolution), a reenactment of the 1978 Afghan Communist coup d'état shot just three months after the actual events, and details here some of his interactions with deputy party leader Hafizullah Amin, who conceived of and starred in the film. He also tells how footage featuring Amin disappeared when sent to Uzbekistan for color processing, with some scenes resurfacing in 1980 in the documentary Afghanistan: The Revolution Continues by Malek Kayoumov; those scenes are intercut here. This edit also covers Latif's work as director of the film Green Field, a docu-fiction-propaganda film about the benefits of mechanized agriculture (with a love story), and the trouble he got into with KhAD and the KGB while shooting it. Interview conducted in the Afghan Films screening room in July 2017 by Ali M. Latifi and Mariam Ghani.
This version has hardcoded subs instead of transcripts and subtitles are conformed to closed captioning standards. (For transcripts use
pad.ma/JPK.)
Edit and Russian/English subs created for the Field Research project at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. Provided as H.264 Quicktime, AAC audio export from Resolve. Footage sources: DnXHD 1080 transcode of Canon 4K (interview), telecine to HD file (Kayoumov clips), telecine to DVCAM tape (Green Field clips)