How a 24-year-old director and clip maker from Kazakhstan shoots videos for rapper Offset, Jah Khalib and Ivan Dorn

Aisultan Seitov is a young music video director and director who has won the hearts of performers from all over the world. His video works are gaining millions of views on the Internet, world stars themselves ask to shoot clips for them. Aisultan gave an interview two years ago Yuri Dudyu, in which he spoke in detail about his studies at the New York Film Academy and how he lived next to homeless drag queens. In our article, we have collected the most complete information about Aisultan from several sources.

In an interview for his alma mater New York Film Academy (NYFA) Aisultan said that he wanted to become an engineer. But first things first.

Aisultan Seitov was born in 1997 in Almaty. Filmmaking was a hobby for him, but he was very fond of watching the short footage that filmed it. school teacher. Aisultan, like the rest of the students in the class, looked forward to a new teacher's film every week. In high school, he won several international film competitions.

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One day, he received an email that NYFA was coming to his hometown. He applied for a grant from the state with a horror film. Studying at NYFA has always been his dream, and he managed to get into the academy. As Aisultan says in an interview on the Vdud channel, then training cost $35-000, but he received a discount of almost 40% of this amount. Aisultan's parents are divorced, and such an amount was unbearable for his family. Then my mother sold the apartment in which they lived in order to send her son to study in the USA.

Aisultan studied for a year at the New York branch of the academy, then moved to the branch of the academy in Los Angeles for 3 years. He lived in a tourist area frequented by homeless transvestites. But he liked this area, although sometimes it scared him. At times, residents of the area may have used drugs. And once he even saw three of these "dudes stoned" in his stairwell. “I was very afraid to step over them, so I waited for them to get up and leave,” Aisultan recalled.

Filming in Africa, America and Asia

Seitov filmed a video for the famous singer Ivan Dorn in Uganda. The idea of ​​filming in the East African state belongs to Dorn. Aisultan wrote the script at 6 am, and when he sent it to Ivan, he immediately said that the shooting would take place in Uganda. The film crew spent 7 days there. This was in March 2019. Ivan was responsible for staging dances and teaching them to local children. Directing was on Aisultan. The video for the song OTD-Afrika gained 6 views.

He says that he met Offset thanks to his friend from Kazakhstan (Offset is a member of the Migos project from Atlanta.) Then they still did not know a Kazakh from the USA, who met Offset at one of the parties and showed him a showreel (cut from the director's work) Aisultan . After watching the showreel, Offset sends a message to his producers asking them to find Aisultan.

Success seemed to him savagery

Although Offset himself offered cooperation, Aisultan wrote 3 scripts, taking into account all the comments of the performer. A month later, the producers approved the script. The video for the song Offset Red Room has received 59 views since its release on Youtube.

Even before the video was published, Offset showed it to all his friends. He considered Aisultan's work really successful. Among the friends were also 21 Savage, whose producers contacted Aisultan's team. After watching the Offset clip, they offered Aisultan to shoot a new video. According to Aisultan, when he received an e-mail with an offer to shoot a video for the track A Lot, he “jumped for happiness”. “Because this track is a collaboration with J.Cole and… I like this track very much,” said the director.

Clip A Lot a month after publication scored 58 views.

In addition, Aisultan participated in directing the presentation of Kanye West's most anticipated album Donda, which was a real breakthrough in his career, says Vokrug TV.

He got an offer from Offset, shot a video, immersed himself in the local scene and "thought it was wild." He was immensely happy with the success and the fact that he received offers from venerable performers.

“I don't like my videos”

Aisultan considers his most successful work to be the directing of the video “Medina” of the song of the same name by the Kazakh artist Jah Khalib. This is the most expensive clip in Kazakhstan, which was filmed near the fortress from the filming of the film “Nomads”.

He said “that he does not like his clips”, and considers “Medina” successful because of technical issues. In addition to the set, there were 500 people involved. According to Harper's Bazaar, the main roles in the video were played by actor Zhandos Aibasov and model Aya Shalkar. The clip was rapidly gaining popularity and at the time of this writing there were already 150 views.

Films

The diploma film "The Jackal" in 2016 won the New York Film Festival Hollywood Boulevard in the nomination "Best Director".

Aisultan filmed a short documentary film Charisma about duet "Miyagi & Endgame".

Now Aisultan is the co-founder of Qara Production and the exclusive director of Hype Production. Most recently, on his Instagram page, Aisultan shared a poster for his “Kash”.

He announced the release of this debut feature film, filmed in 2021 in Kazakhstan. “Kash” is translated from Kazakh as “Call” or “Run”.

Aisultan and his Qara production studio have been preparing for the shooting for more than a year. The screenwriter of the project is Albay Nurmanbetov, for whom this film also became the debut feature. The main storyline and genre of the picture have not yet been disclosed, according to Esquire.ru.

The main role in “Kash” was played by Yerkebulan Daiyrov, Varvara Shmykova and Alexander Pal will also appear in the film. The premiere will take place at the end of 2022. The film will be released only in the Kazakh language.