#Canon golden eagle rewards program full#

While sitting down to a traditional drink of milky Kazakh tea, Nurgaiv mentioned, 'My daughter and I are going to steal an eaglet from its nest. Based on Cayte's reaction, I knew that sort of thing would resonate with an audience, but let's face it, as a dude, I am rather clueless about that sort of thing.'ДЄlthough the capture of the eaglet takes place within the climax of the doc's first act, in real time it transpired on the first day that photographer Asher Svidensky brought Bell and cameraman Christopher Raymond to meet the family. Not only was this acutely shy girl performing these amazing feats-scaling down a mountain, hypnotizing an eaglet with rhythmic hand gestures-she was also, at heart, a 13-year old girl who loves to tie ribbons in her hair, paint her nails and hang out with her friends. It was not until he was showing the footage of the eagle capture to his girlfriend (now fiancГ©e) that he realized the emotional resonance that such a small moment could elicit: 'Cayte responded to that little detail, the chipped nail polish, with such empathy I knew we had something special.

If you do manage to register this particular detail, like me, you may just chalk it up to the inevitability of a nomadic lifestyle, where the oldest child (her older brother having been conscripted by the military) is expected to help her father with the feeding and shepherding of the family's livestock, and her mother with the other chores inside and outside the family's nomadic home.Д«ell admits that this particular detail and its significance were completely missed by him. Speaking to the subtleties mentioned earlier, there is also the barely perceptible detail of Aisholpan's chipped purple nail polish as she scales down a mountaintop and jury-rigs a lasso to capture her fledgling eaglet. With the sensory overload of sublime vistas and a foreign language (Kazakh) requiring the use of subtitles, one might not notice when young Aisholpan's facial expression toggles from her beatific smile to a frustrated frown by my count, it only occurs three times within the documentary, and the moments vanish almost as quickly as they appear, but the reasons for this nuanced display of emotion should be left to the viewer to discern. It is Aisholpan's mother who points out that there is nothing within the rules of the Golden Eagle Festival, the proving ground for generations of Kazakh eagle hunters, that prohibits females from entering the competition.

#Canon golden eagle rewards program full#

Fortunately, she has the full support of both her father and her mother, Almagul.

Despite the resistance of an age-old tradition that dictates that eagle hunters must be male, Aisholpan and her father are determined for her to capture her own eaglet and become the first female eagle hunter in the family's history. The Eagle Huntress follows young Aisholpan as she trains with her father, Nurgaiv, to become the 12th eagle hunter in the family's lineage.

Reaching out to the Israeli photographer through social media, Bell was able to convince Svidensky that he and his team were the best fit to bring Aisholpan's story to the outside world-and the rest, as they say, is a documentary, one that was two years in the making.

It is a classic example of the spectacle of the big picture-golden eagles soaring through blue and white marbled skies-overshadowing the quieter, more intimate moments.В If this was a Western it would be a case of the director, Otto Bell, facing off against the cinematographer, Simon Niblett.В Although Niblett did envision the heroic tableau of a western while composing the shots for this documentary, both men are on the same team and have worked together for several years on various shorter films and creative projects.В There is a delicate balance that they weave between the macro and the micro with this film, and a second viewing really helped this viewer to recognize those subtler moments.Д«ell first learned of the eagle hunters and of Aisholpan, the 13-year-old Kazakh girl for which this film isВ named, via the photos of Asher Svidensky. There are moments of subtlety and nuances of character development to be discovered in the visual narrative of the documentary, The Eagle Huntress, but they are easy to miss.