Tashkent 58-88 / NEŽNOST’

TASHKENT 58-88
As early as 1958, an Afro-Asian film festival and a writers' conference took place in the Uzbek capital, making Tashkent the centre for South-South relations. Based on the festival's slogan - ‘For peace, social progress and the freedom of peoples’ - the ideology of ‘friendship between peoples’ became a cornerstone of Soviet rhetoric.
Zumrad Mirzalieva montages recordings of newsreels about the festival to take a critical look at the promised friendship between peoples, and comes up against strict hierarchies.
Zumrad Mirzalieva / n.d. / 2024 / DCP / 20min / Russian OmenglU

NEŽNOST' (TENDERNESS)
The three novellas about first love and disappointment are set in Tashkent in the 1960s. Sand?ar falls in love with Lena. She is traumatised by her evacuation from besieged Leningrad and finds happiness with Timur, until the two are separated forever. The schoolgirl Mamura comforts Timur, with whom she herself is in love. Filming had to be interrupted due to the severe earthquake in 1966. Many film locations were destroyed and the curfew made work even more difficult. The original concept was discarded, a lot of improvisation was used and hidden cameras were employed.
Ėl'er Išmuchamedov / USSR / 1966 / 35 mm / 74min / Russian original language