Video Data Bank is proud to present Deborah Stratman's Kings of the Sky, on VDB TV. Kings of the Sky is an experimental documentary about resistance, balance, and fame, and follows tightrope artist Adil Hoxur as he and his troupe tour China’s Taklamakan desert amongst the Uyghurs, a Turkic Muslim people seeking religious and political autonomy.

"Chicagoan Deborah Stratman, who specializes in experimental documentaries, spent four months with tightrope walker Adil Hoxur — cited in the Guinness Book of World Records and the latest descendant of a family of tightrope performers over many centuries — as he and his troupe toured Chinese Turkestan and performed nightly in small villages. Among his biggest fans are fellow Uyghurs, a Turkic Muslim people seeking religious and political autonomy. Stratman emphasizes the everyday over the exotic, a consistently fresh and personal way of relating to the material; she trusts viewers to make many of the right connections but never comes across as esoteric. Her sense of rhythm in this digital video, particularly evident in the way she edits and lingers over certain kinds of movement, is especially impressive.”

 — Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

An experimental documentary about resistance, balance and fame. Kings of the Sky follows tightrope artist Adil Hoxur as he and his troupe tour China’s Taklamakan desert amongst the Uyghurs, a Turkic Muslim people seeking religious and political autonomy.

The project was shot over four months with Adil and his troupe as we toured Chinese Turkestan, performing nightly in tiny oasis villages. Adil descends from a long line of Dawaz (tightrope) performers and is now teaching his daughters the craft. Since he first broke the Guinness World Record in 1997, Adil’s fame has eclipsed anything achieved by his forbears. He has become an inadvertent national icon for his people’s struggle, bearing uncanny resemblance to the Dawaz hero of an old Uyghur myth who once freed his countrymen from an oppressive reign of invading ghosts, an apt metaphor for the ongoing tension between the Uyghurs and the Han Chinese.