Authors

Natascha Drubek¹; Anisa Sabiri²;  ¹ Apparatus journal, Germany;  ² School of Arts and Sciences, Naryn, Kyrgyzstan

Discussion

In this presentation, we draw on Central Asian concepts rooted in Persian artistic traditions, where gates symbolize access to different ways of knowing. Persian miniatures use gates, doors, and portals as multidimensional spaces that expand perceptions of time and identity. This metaphor offers a new lens to decolonize Soviet cinema, challenging the imperial frames imposed on local narratives and revealing sites of potential resistance and reimagined identities.

We explore the cinema of the USSR as a historical epistemic gate through which identities in Soviet controlled regions like Ukraine and Central Asia were constructed and controlled. Filmmakers such as Dziga Vertov, Sergei Eisenstein, and Ivan Pyr'ev portrayed these areas through Soviet ideals and stereotypes, erasing realities of local lives and deaths: post-famine Ukraine becomes a comedic, folksy musical, as seen in Pyr’ev’s "Wealthy Bride" (Ukrainfil’m, 1937), Central Asia is a space to be "modernized" and its women "liberated". In his 1930s documentaries, Vertov, along with editor Elizaveta Svilova, depicted the happiness of the "unveiled woman" as a prime example of Soviet “liberation” in Central Asia, casting the region’s women as objects of state-led transformation. In "The General Line", Eisenstein used the backdrop of Mughan Plains to ahow the “old order” being transformed by Soviet progress.

These cinematic frames obscured local histories and cultural practices, filtering them through a Soviet epistemic gate that reinforced imperial ideologies in different ways. By revisiting these gates critically, this co-presentation seeks to estrange our perception of Soviet cinema. With filmmaker Anisa we will try look through these cinematic gates from the other side.