Central Asia’s ‘Children of Independence’ Win Festival Plaudits, Look to Grow Nascent Post-Soviet Screen Biz
variety.comChristopher Vourlias Three decades after the fall of the Soviet Union, an emerging generation of filmmakers born and raised in the independent countries of Central Asia is giving an exhilarating charge to the region’s cinema and helping to put their unheralded industries on the map.
Leading Kazakh film critic Gulnara Abikeyeva says these “children of independence” are bringing a “new attitude” to the screen and giving a jolt of energy to emerging industries that for decades were under Moscow’s thumb. “The production of films is growing very fast in all Central Asian countries,” she says. “There have appeared so many young production studios who can make movies with public or private money.” With the collapse of the Soviet Union, what Abikeyeva describes as the “euphoria of freedom” caught hold across its former Central Asian republics, which include Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan.
Filmmakers who previously had to submit their scripts to all-powerful Soviet state-backed committees no longer needed Moscow’s approval to make their movies. “There was a sense that we can do anything we want,” she says.
However, that energy quickly butt against the realities of filmmaking in newly independent countries who had long relied on Moscow for the financing, promotion and distribution of films.
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