Mozalan (1971)
Mozalan / The Gadfly, No. 4 (1971).
Sketch 3: Müstəntiq və məntiq (The Investigator and Logic). Long before Mimino or The Interrogation, before Mzhavanadze even fell in Tbilisi, Aliev's Azerbaijan was already producing satirical content about the cleanup. Mozalan began in 1971 as Azerbaijanfilm's quarterly answer to Moscow's Fitil, with three or four short comic sketches per issue exposing factory bosses, bribe-taking personnel officers, and the bureaucratic types who decided who got which post. The aesthetic is crude and visibly didactic, the politics firmly state-sanctioned. What made this possible in 1971, two years before Shevardnadze even arrived in Tbilisi, was the language: Mozalan ran in Azerbaijani, with no Russian subtitling. The Moscow audience never saw it. Aliev ran the cleanup's cultural arm years before his Caucasus counterparts could, precisely because Mozalan stayed in Azerbaijani.
Mozalan, No. 4 (1971). Satirical newsreel, in Azerbaijani. Azerbaijanfilm Studio, Baku.