Most people, when asked about Mongolian cinema, answer that the film Urga (aka. Close to Eden) by Nikita Mikhalkov, represents Mongolia, or at least the image we have of it. They usually add that this specific film has had a decisive effect on them and has corroborated a certain perception of 20th century Mongolia. If Urga, however, builds an image removed from the usual cliché of Gingis Khan and a people thirsty for blood and conquest, one should note that it is not a Mongolian film at all. Directed by a well established Russian director, it is a French- Russian co-production set and filmed in Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region of China. (Several directors who have tried to shoot films in Outer Mongolia were quickly discouraged by the heavy administrative work and the authorizations that could quickly be withdrawn without any further explanation. Therefore, dealing with the Chinese authority and working in Inner Mongolia was most of the time far easier.) Although the cast is Mongolian and the landscapes representative of the central Asian steppes in general, it nonetheless takes place in a region where the Chinese have for long outnumbered Mongolians. Cultural codes are largely Chinese and the Mongolian population is bilingual. The film is in Mongolian and attempts to reference typically Mongolian objects and customs, all street signs however are in Chinese.
The word Urga refers to a specific object in Mongolian culture: a lasso on the end of a pole that the nomads use in herding. When stuck upright, it serves to warn interlopers that a young man is courting a young woman nearby --- in the film a reference to the hero's sexual awakening. Urga is also the former name of Mongolia's capital Ulaanbaatar. Film critics in Mongolia insist that the director probably never visited what they consider to be the real Mongolia and therefore was never really able to grasp what Mongolia is about. There have been many films made about Mongolia, whose geography and history conspire to make it a fabulous land of fantasy and myth, incarnated in Gingis Khan, his conquests, the romantic vastness of the steppes and the nomadic character of the people. Sandwiched between Russia and China, the geographical situation of Mongolia has, over the years, made it subject to the poweful influence of both cultures. It is this Mongolia, today ironically one of the poorest countries on the planet, which has inspired so many films from around the world and Mongolia itself.