Taking Turkmenistan to task. By MELODY NIXON.

THE SO-CALLED ‘holy book’ filmmakers Arto Halonen and Kevin Frazier explore in this rough, patchy documentary is the ‘Ruhnama;’ a hysterical and exploitative work put together by former Turkmenistan dictator Saparmurat Niyazov, or Turkmenbashy, as he affectionately called himself. In uncovering what could perhaps be the most esoteric of all subjects in geopolitics, Halonen and Frazier manage to successfully bring to light the intentions, consequences and – ever present in contemporary exposé docos – the multi-national corporate links behind the Ruhnama.

The face behind the regime – or perhaps more aptly, the regime behind the face, for as we learn Niyazov’s image is literally plastered all over Turkmenistan – is presented from various angles as we meet former heads of state and human rights activists who have been expelled from the country. They tell of appalling human rights abuses, particularly in the repression of free-speech, including that by journalists and members of the so-called opposition. Apt then that Turkmenbashy chooses the book as his weapon of choice, allegedly ‘educating’ his citizens to his version of Islam, and his supposed lineage as the thirteenth great Muslim prophet.

The style is a mix of first-hand interviews (or non-interviews, as many of the foreign corporations with dealings in Turkmenistan typically refuse to talk) and ilicit footage recovered from inside one of the world’s worst dictatorships. (Apparently Turkmenistan is up there with North Korea and Eritrea in terms of restrictions on the right to free speech.)

Turkmenistan is a fore-runner in oil and gas production, and this factor has attracted much of the corporate interest, ruefully resulting in the corporate-sponsored translation of the Ruhnama into over 30 languages. At the head of multi-national corporate interest is a Turkish businessman who managed to tame Niyazov and become his right-hand man, ending up a minister in the Turkmenbashy’s cabinet. Sadly the illusive businessman is uncontactable, much to the filmmakers disappointment, but we certainly get to see great mountains of his company’s work, as he has ‘won’ the contracts to build most of Ashgabat’s great monuments. Familiar names like Shell, Siemens, John Deere, Zepplin, Caterpillar, and French company Bouygues also pop up as contractors for other buildings and oil and gas extraction programmes across the state.

Perhaps the most ridiculous and intriguing of all of the gold-bedecked works of propaganda Niyazov has commissioned on his behalf is the seven-metre-plus statue of the Ruhnama itself, complete with a mechanism that opens and closes the book at opportune moments. In the film’s most bizarre moment we are shown a concert of the book’s opening, complete with fire-works, projected images of Niyazov’s face, and an ominous pre-recorded speech that booms out the propaganda of the Ruhnama. These “Disneyland”-like images contribute to make Shadow of the Holy Book a fascinatingly informative, and thoroughly chilling, experience.