Review: When I first heard about Genghis Blues, I was excited. A documentary about a blues artist turned odd, throat-singing specialist is truly extraordinary and when it has a few awards and nominations attached with it, one can’t help but be curious. Unfortunately, it took exactly 15 minutes into the film to be fully reminded of the reasons main stream audiences dread seeing documentaries: it’s too mismatched, too forceful, too reminiscent of low budget film standards from a decade ago to generate excitement. I’ll admit this, filmmakers Adrian and Roco Belic stumbled upon one of the single greatest gold mines of story telling in Genghis Blues. Paul Pena is so full of duality (highs and lows, happiness and sadness, curiosity and fear) he deserves a film for every stage in his life. Equally impressive are the Tuvans (a small, isolated group of people just north of Mongolia), their unique form of throat singing, and Pena’s own entourage (the radio show host is my personal favorite), that the mere discussion of these characters and ideas is bound to bring up countless story ideas (filmmakers take note). Unfortunately, the Belic bumps into it all, putting his thumb all over the lens, obscuring the warmth that lies underneath. The camera work is awful, the film quality is horrendous and the editing leaves more than just a little to be desired. Yes, the story is amazing and worth praise, but this should have never been nominated for any award at any festival (much less won). There are too many problems with the quality of the film for me to recommend this to anyone- even with such fascinating stories and characters. One of the main problems is a lack of focus on one or two topics. Belic can’t decide between making this about Pena, Tuvan throat singing, the musical contest, Tuvan culture, the journey, the filmmaker’s journey, or a host of other topics mentioned. If you threw a deck of cards into the air and gathered them back up, you’d have as much order as Genghis Blues. Some might think this is a harsh assessment of a film that earned its fair share of praise when it was released, but for me, Genghis Blues symbolizes all that is wrong with the documentary film genre and I am close to demanding a new film on this subject so I can truly appreciate Paul Pena, Tuvan throat singing and every person seen in this documentary as they deserve to be. Review by Matthew Abshire Informative: 2- it helps to have a healthy douse of knowledge of both Tuvan and the characters involved before hand Entertainment: 3- some of the oddest, most heartwarming characters you’ll ever meet Technical: 1- some moments of brilliance are shrouded by poor video and audio, the lack of focus doesn’t help either. Overall: 2- the story and the characters carry a film full of mainly patch work direction
 
Format: DVD Year: 1999 Running Time: 80 Min Distributor: Roxie Releasing Producer: Adrian Belic and Roco Belic Director: Roco Belic Date Reviewed: 1-13-2007 Story: A blind San Francisco blues singer's journey to becoming a master of Tuvan throat singing is the subject of Roko and Adrian Belic's Oscar-nominated documentary. Paul Pena became fascinated with the Tuvan art form after hearing it on a Russian radio broadcast; he then met the Mongolian masters on a U.S. tour. The Tuvans were so impressed with Pena that they invited him to Tuva's annual singing competition; his adventures there form the heart of Genghis Blues (NetFlix).