Throat-Singin’ the Blues
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In 1994, after graduating from the University of California at Santa Barbara with a degree in studio art, Belic arranged a trip to Russia with hopes of extending his travels to Tuva. Before he left, he mustered the nerve to call Ralph Leighton. Leighton, who had played bongos with Feynman and helped him write his autobiographical best-sellers Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman and What Do You Care What Other People Think?, had also been the physicist’s coconspirator in his Tuvan quest. In his own 1992 book, Tuva or Bust!, Leighton explains that their interest was sparked by a dinner conversation in 1977. Feynman asked, “What ever happened to Tannu Tuva?” which is how he knew it from the colorful, odd-shaped postage stamps the country had issued in the 30s. Leighton had no answer, so they consulted Encyclopaedia Britannica, where they discovered that the capital of Tuva was Kyzyl. “A place that’s spelled K-Y-Z-Y-L has just got to be interesting!” Feynman said.
Finally, in 1985, Leighton saw an opportunity in the form of a Soviet archaeological exhibit in Sweden. He and Feynman volunteered to arrange for the show to come to the U.S., partly in hopes of gaining entree to Tuva, and it worked–on February 15, 1988, the Soviet government issued them permission to come. Unfortunately, a month before the papers arrived in the U.S., Feynman died of cancer. Leighton made the trip alone that spring.
The Belic brothers spent the next four years completing the film, and it began showing around the U.S. this summer. Unfortunately, just as it opened, Pena, now 49, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. “When he told us about it he said that now he’d never be able to get to Cape Verde,” where his grandparents were born, says Roko. As Pena undergoes chemotherapy, the brothers are trying to raise money to send him there.
