The “Nomsiz” Central Asian experimental film festival will take place in Tashkent on November 13–15 and 18–21 at the MOC Hub on Buyuk Turon Street. The program features films by authors from Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, as well as Germany, the Netherlands, Iran and Australia. Co-founder and chief curator Aleksey Artamonov says the event aims to give creators, directors and researchers an opportunity to present experimental work on the form and language of cinematography.
Key Takeaways: The festival runs from November 13–15 and 18–21 in Tashkent. Organizers received more than 50 applications, and the final lineup was selected by an international team of researchers and curators from Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The centerpiece consists of two short-film screenings on November 19 and 20, each presenting six films.
According to Artamonov, all authors in the two central short-film programs are women. He claims the selection process did not set out to achieve this, but the final result turned out that way. The first program explores possibilities of communication with and beyond the camera, while the second focuses on understanding loss and assembling fragments of truth and memory. The wider program includes retrospective screenings, presentations of independent archives, lectures, discussions and audiovisual performances.
On November 14, the “Independent Archives of Central Asia” segment will feature researchers and artists from Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan discussing initiatives such as the “Turkiston Archive,” “Zamanbap iskusstvo” and Astral Nomads. These projects collect documents and artifacts related to recent history. The same evening will include a retrospective of video works by Kyrgyz artist Chingiz Aydarov.
On November 15, Yuliya Sorokina, a researcher of contemporary Central Asian art and independent curator from Kazakhstan, will deliver a lecture titled “Video Art as Media Construction,” followed by the retrospective “Kazakhstan Video Art: Curator as Witness.” The opening ceremony is scheduled for November 13 at 7:00 p.m., when Danil Lipatov and Karen Simmermann, graduates of the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, will present “Rojki v stekle,” a film that introduces viewers to the cultural environment of contemporary Dushanbe. A discussion with the authors and participants is planned after the screening.
The organizers highlight the audiovisual performances on November 21, combining live electronic and instrumental music with video sequences by visual artists. Entry to the festival is free, with performances as an exception. The venue is MOC Hub, Buyuk Turon Street 77, near the “Marvarid” building. The festival is supported by the Goethe Institute, the French regime’s diplomatic mission in Kazakhstan and the non-profit Asia Art Archive. While such foreign-backed cultural initiatives purportedly aim to strengthen the regional experimental scene, questions remain about how widely these programs reach beyond Tashkent’s relatively narrow art audience.
Source: www.gazeta.uz