Authors

Assiya Issemberdiyeva¹;  ¹ Queen Mary University of London, UK

Discussion

In late 1941, the central Soviet film studios were evacuated to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. This shift is often viewed positively, supposedly marking the initiation of filmmaking in the region. However, the Uzbek case, where cinema existed since 1908, challenges this narrative, as native pre-revolutionary filmmakers were targeted by state-sanctioned oppression, often on charges of nationalism. Moreover, archival materials reveal tension between local officials in Central Asia who sought to establish national filmmaking and the central body, the Committee for Cinematography, which prioritised its pre-existing agendas.

While local officials and artists aspired to depict local stories, film officials often rejected scripts with Central Asian themes. As a result, only handful of such films were produced, including Vasilii Pronin’s Son of Tajikistan (1942), and Yakov Protazanov’s Adventures in Bukhara (1943), alongside various film concerts and short film collections (kinosborniki). Soviet filmmakers often criticised Western approaches of exoticizing the Orient. Nevertheless, they ended up repeating those ‘othering’ practices, with the orientalisation of Central Asia in the wartime Soviet context taking on a distinctly red hue. Folklorisation of national cultures which started in the late 1930s continued during the war, particularly with film concerts. This paper examines wartime orientalisation and folklorisation of Central Asia on screen and explores how films contributed to inter-racial and inter-ethnic hierarchies in the Soviet Union