Amba the Russian Tiger

A Documentary Review of: Amba the Russian Tiger

I love the way this documentary is put together.  Its not a simple hosted quest for the russian tiger, but a mix of two different stories.  There are two stories that are unfolding at the same time.  One is the quest of our host to find the russian tiger, the second is a more poetic story of the legend of the tiger - told by a russian narrator in the voice of a tiger itself.  

The narrative train of this film is surrounded by the hosts quest to find and film the tiger.  While so many doumentaries use this technique - a quest to find such and such animal, this piece is extremely educational to watch because of the intreaguing way the documentary tells the story of eastern russia and its people.  

Our host explains to the camera that he came in with a fixed idea of the story and how he was going to tell it, but now it has completely changed.  He said its more about feeling the place and the people that live there.  Its more about searching for ideals and a place.  

Along our journey to find the journey we go though side-tracked stories.  We learn about how the russians enjoy hot saunas and then running into the cold to cool themself down.  We learn about the capitalistic driven logging industry that is destroying the forests in eastern russia. 

In some ways this story feels like a personal essay of our filmmaker-host.  He asks questions thoughout and goes on a quest to find them.  When he finds the loggers, he asks whether tigers can even sustain themselves with the destruction of the forests.  To do this, he notes, he must go further into the forest.  

In the end he states that he has to give up hope in looking for the tiger but concentrate on understanding Amba.  His guides have all gone, its just him and the forest now.  He talks about the traditional beliefs of understanding Amba.  He said that by not seeing the tiger in the wild he has had the chance to picture the tiger in these woods. He says he has understood much more about the forests and how threatened life is in this land.

Finally, after a month in the land, he visits some tigers behind a fenced enclosure.  How it looks he says is one half the story, the rest of the story is how it lives in the wild.

The world is changing, and the fate of the tigers, he concludes depends on man and whomever values the existance of the tigers.

This video was produced by Mike Birkhead Associates for Animal Planet International and hosted by -  Gordon Buchanan, a scottish wildlife filmmaker.

The video on YouTube:

To give you an idea of what this film is we found a few clips on youtube that introduce this movie.

All 6 parts to this series can be seen on Youtube (as of 12-13-09). This is the first in the series. To finish watching all of them do a quick search on google.