FILM - CEN - ASIA

The participants of a 3-day conference titled: Communicating with the Persian Speaking World were treated with a few good films. These included screening of a film from Tajikistan: “Calendar of Expectations” (2005) and a Q&A session with the Director: Safarbek Soliev "The Calender of Longing" provides several illustrations of how people pass on their present in the hope and anticipation of what the future would bring for them. The film is set in Tajikistan's high mountain district of Nurabad and is a realistic reflection of how people go about their lives amidst tough terrain, harsh climate and severe shortages. The film provides a snapshot of the melting pot nature of the Tajik society its roots in the past and the changes being experienced in the present times. The film's central character, Samad, a elderly villager is collecting wood for a coffin so that his soul could rest close to his roots. This matters vital for him as his grand father died on the front in...

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...