FILM - CEN - ASIA

Shuhrat Abbasov's 1957 epic You Aren't Orphaned was screened at the Centre of Contemporary Central Asia and the Caucasus, SOAS, London on 15 November. The film comes from the Central Asia Cinema Collection portraying life in Central Asia during the Soviet and post-Soviet settings. The collection, is titled as “Two Epochs of National Self-Determination in Central Asian Cinema: The ’60s and ’90s” and contains two sets of films, feature and documentary. Both sets contain 10 films—five made during the Soviet times, and five made since independence—that are emblematic of each Central Asian Republic. The countries represented in the collection are Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. A Central Asian cinema expert, Gulnara Abikeyeva, was commissioned to bring together this DVD collection by the Open Society Institute. Movie title: You are not an orphan / Ты не сирота A quick synopsis from the OSI Archives : The film is the touching story of an Uzbek fam...

The screening of a selection of Central Asian film organized at Centre of Contemporary Central Asia and the Caucasus at SOAS, London provides observers of the region's film scene a good opportunity to watch some interesting productions. The first film in the series - The Orator (Voiz) – effortlessly cruises through a backdrop of historic moments visiting in the Uzbekistan of 1915 onwards peeking into how the circumstances touched the lives of ordinary men and women. The Orator's writer and producer Yusup Razykov tells a story of Iskander, a poor cart man, who happens to find himself at the centre of events that impact his marital life, family relations and his position in the society. Firstly his dying brother compels him to marry his two wives to take care of their sustenance. Then, a chance encounter with some Bolsheviks on the run pulls him to the stage so that he could talk to the people of the locality, in their own language, about changes takes place in the society. The c...