There's a lot here to celebrate, especially your open-minded celebration of the ways in which most if not all cultures have made 'foreign imports' like Islam responsive to their home-grown views of what makes a good life. I have been a nominal muslim since my twenties when I married a muslim (long since dead of cancer). Because it was then considered necessary to convert I said 'yes' when the mullah asked something in Arabic during our wedding, and presto, I joined the other billion plus muslims worldwide. And thought nothing of it, but over the years, intrigued by the art, the poetry, the music and the sense of the sacred inherent in the faith I began to study it in depth. And it's nothing like the heavily Saudi-influenced version of it in most places. Rather than being the Islamic version of Christian Fundamentalism it's an easy and accessible faith to embrace, and even the hijab (which I personally never wear) can be worn with flair, as evidenced by the ways they rock it in cities like London. And Central Asia, which has long enjoyed commerce with India btw, developed a Sufi interpretation of the faith that is now practiced all across Europe, in Asia, in Australia and the US, not to mention in those middle eastern countries less repressive than Iran and Saudi Arabia. So kudos for the inspiring travelogue. I hope more folks begin to travel to the region to see for themselves what 'different,' non-Anglo cultures have come up with by just being themselves.
As a product of the cold war (parents fled a Soviet invasion), I am always fascinated hearing about what was once obscured by iron curtains. Thank you for this! With respect to the theme of nostalgia, perhaps there is some Baader-Meinhof / frequency illusion going on for me, but this seems to be a rising trend globally. I know "the good ole days" is as time immemorial as the good ole days, but are we in/heading for a particularly acute period of "the past was better" ? Maga Trump certainly seems dominated by this as well as did the illiberal left during the racial reconning of 2020 where somehow 2020 was the most racist period ever in America.
Amid the doomsaying so fashionable among would be intellectuals it’s good to be reminded of human capacity for progress.
As an academic historian of modern Germany I find it exhausting to have to constantly remind people that our civilization has made tremendous progress - including moral progress - especially in the last three centuries. Despite the many challenges confronting humanity, it is obtuse to think that in the long term we will not reach greater heights.
That said, humankind will get to better times a lot faster if we Americans can restore our democracy and provide leadership. The key to that outcome is breaking the tyranny of money in politics.
In 2004, I co-programmed a series of films from the Central Asian Republics, and OSI gave us a grant which allowed me and my co-programmer, Alla Verlotsky, to travel to the region to meet filmmakers, studio heads, historians and archive staff. We spent most of the time in Kazakhstan, in Almaty and a day up in the mountains at a particular director's fish and horse farm; and in Uzbekistan, in Tashkent and a day trip to Samarkand. In between, we spent a couple of days in Bishkek. (We did not go to Tajikistan or Turkmenistan.)
What I remember from my time in Kyrgyzstan was great cordiality and warmth from my hosts, a degree of austerity, and lots and lots of meat for every meal. I also remember a distinctly post-Soviet ambience, also true of Kazakhstan, less so of Uzbekistan, a different world.
Cinema offers a unique window on the culture, and every movie carries the DNA of its time and place. It can be deceptive, of course, because art, when it's good, is a poetic distillation, a reconfiguration of elements from life into a vision. But then, as Flannery O'Connor said, the story of civilizations is not told through its statistics but through its poems - by extension, through its art. I was moved to do the retrospective because of the films I'd seen and come to love from Kazakhstan, the films of Darezhan Omirbaev in particular. But there were remarkable filmmmakers in Kyrgyzstan. Akhtan Abdikalikov, who had made a beautiful film called BESHKEMPIR (actually distributedin the United states), invited us to his office to watch films. I vividly remember a medium length film, THE CALL OF THE SOUL, that I loved, and which we couldn't include because no one could figure out how to get in touch with the filmmaker. I also became acquainted with the films of Tolomush Okeev, a great filmmaker who had passed away three years earlier at the age of 66. His films are in serious need of restoration. Unless I'm mistaken, the majority of the negatives are housed at Goskino in Moscow. Which now makes for an extremely difficult situation.
I need to stress that these were films made not by companies, but by individuals.
There's a lot here to celebrate, especially your open-minded celebration of the ways in which most if not all cultures have made 'foreign imports' like Islam responsive to their home-grown views of what makes a good life. I have been a nominal muslim since my twenties when I married a muslim (long since dead of cancer). Because it was then considered necessary to convert I said 'yes' when the mullah asked something in Arabic during our wedding, and presto, I joined the other billion plus muslims worldwide. And thought nothing of it, but over the years, intrigued by the art, the poetry, the music and the sense of the sacred inherent in the faith I began to study it in depth. And it's nothing like the heavily Saudi-influenced version of it in most places. Rather than being the Islamic version of Christian Fundamentalism it's an easy and accessible faith to embrace, and even the hijab (which I personally never wear) can be worn with flair, as evidenced by the ways they rock it in cities like London. And Central Asia, which has long enjoyed commerce with India btw, developed a Sufi interpretation of the faith that is now practiced all across Europe, in Asia, in Australia and the US, not to mention in those middle eastern countries less repressive than Iran and Saudi Arabia. So kudos for the inspiring travelogue. I hope more folks begin to travel to the region to see for themselves what 'different,' non-Anglo cultures have come up with by just being themselves.
As a product of the cold war (parents fled a Soviet invasion), I am always fascinated hearing about what was once obscured by iron curtains. Thank you for this! With respect to the theme of nostalgia, perhaps there is some Baader-Meinhof / frequency illusion going on for me, but this seems to be a rising trend globally. I know "the good ole days" is as time immemorial as the good ole days, but are we in/heading for a particularly acute period of "the past was better" ? Maga Trump certainly seems dominated by this as well as did the illiberal left during the racial reconning of 2020 where somehow 2020 was the most racist period ever in America.
This is a terrific piece and taught me a lot.
Amid the doomsaying so fashionable among would be intellectuals it’s good to be reminded of human capacity for progress.
As an academic historian of modern Germany I find it exhausting to have to constantly remind people that our civilization has made tremendous progress - including moral progress - especially in the last three centuries. Despite the many challenges confronting humanity, it is obtuse to think that in the long term we will not reach greater heights.
That said, humankind will get to better times a lot faster if we Americans can restore our democracy and provide leadership. The key to that outcome is breaking the tyranny of money in politics.
www.savedemocracyinamerica.org
In 2004, I co-programmed a series of films from the Central Asian Republics, and OSI gave us a grant which allowed me and my co-programmer, Alla Verlotsky, to travel to the region to meet filmmakers, studio heads, historians and archive staff. We spent most of the time in Kazakhstan, in Almaty and a day up in the mountains at a particular director's fish and horse farm; and in Uzbekistan, in Tashkent and a day trip to Samarkand. In between, we spent a couple of days in Bishkek. (We did not go to Tajikistan or Turkmenistan.)
What I remember from my time in Kyrgyzstan was great cordiality and warmth from my hosts, a degree of austerity, and lots and lots of meat for every meal. I also remember a distinctly post-Soviet ambience, also true of Kazakhstan, less so of Uzbekistan, a different world.
Cinema offers a unique window on the culture, and every movie carries the DNA of its time and place. It can be deceptive, of course, because art, when it's good, is a poetic distillation, a reconfiguration of elements from life into a vision. But then, as Flannery O'Connor said, the story of civilizations is not told through its statistics but through its poems - by extension, through its art. I was moved to do the retrospective because of the films I'd seen and come to love from Kazakhstan, the films of Darezhan Omirbaev in particular. But there were remarkable filmmmakers in Kyrgyzstan. Akhtan Abdikalikov, who had made a beautiful film called BESHKEMPIR (actually distributedin the United states), invited us to his office to watch films. I vividly remember a medium length film, THE CALL OF THE SOUL, that I loved, and which we couldn't include because no one could figure out how to get in touch with the filmmaker. I also became acquainted with the films of Tolomush Okeev, a great filmmaker who had passed away three years earlier at the age of 66. His films are in serious need of restoration. Unless I'm mistaken, the majority of the negatives are housed at Goskino in Moscow. Which now makes for an extremely difficult situation.
I need to stress that these were films made not by companies, but by individuals.