Bruce Loeb on Piano This classic mountain film directed by V. A. Erofeev was shot in the Pamir region of Soviet Central Asia from which Davlat Khudonazarov (born in 1944) hails. The Roof of the World is a beautiful and fascinating record of the peoples and landscape of Soviet Central Asia in 1928; it is also a heroic feat of filmmaking. The film, which documents a German-Soviet expedition into Pamir, elicited a now-classic question from Variety in a 1930 review: "Where were the photographers?...Undoubtedly this is one of the finest pieces of photographic record of human heroism extant," the review went on. "Caravans on winding trails through a desert and over mountain paths...Shots of the explorers climbing Feshdneck glacier (the largest outside of the Arctic Circle) thousands of feet above sea level within the scorching rays of the sun or at night by a salt lake of Kara Kula when it was bitter cold and the waters flowed quietly around swimming fowl...A mountain climber slipping off a glacier and getting back to place with the help of his comrades and the gang hurdling rapids...The finale is the scaling of Mt. Lenin, 20,000 feet above sea level..." A visit with Kirghiz living in the valley between the Alai and Trans Alai mountains, and with nomadic Chinese, are among the priceless details this film offers. Director Erofeev (1898-1940) was one of the most interesting and, today, least recognized of Soviet documentary filmmakers. The Roof of the World, which gave audiences access to the newest of Soviet republics, Tadzhikstan, also brought Erofeev wide recognition for his documentary film style, which was in contrast with the more flamboyant aesthetic of Dziga Vertov. In later "travelogues," Erofeev became an innovator in the sound-film documentary.