Kazakh Film Forum Looks at Changing Roles of Family and Gender, Nov. 6-10

Story posted October 30, 2007

TwoFacesSUN.jpg
Two Faces of a Nation (Silkway Films, USA, Inc., 2007) was produced by Jane Knox-Voina and Bowdoin students.

"Kazakh Nation Building through Film: Family and Women as Its Cornerstones," a weeklong film forum featuring screenings and discussions, will be hosted at Bowdoin College and other area locations Tuesday, November 6, 2007, through Saturday, November 10, 2007. All events are open to the public and admission is free. For more information call 725-3782.

The week of cultural events will feature Kazakh films that offer a continuing dialogue with film critics and specialists about the complex nature of a new and evolving frontier: Kazakhstan.

As the response to the recent film Borat shows, little is known about this Central Asian giant. Located on the Silk Road midway between China and the West, Kazakhstan is in a position to play an important role in future world security and in the battle between Christian and Muslim cultures.

Young Filmmakers Experience True Cultural Exchange
Students in yurt

Five Bowdoin students collaborated with Bowdoin Professor of Russian Jane Knox-Voina to write, film, and produce the short documentary on Kazakhstan, "Two Faces of a Nation" (Silkway Films, USA, Inc., 2007). Traveling into the mountains to film village life, the filmmakers stayed in yurts and experienced traditional Kazakh culture firsthand.

"The inside of yurts are so beautiful," notes Voina, "as was the meal celebrated together inside, with the animals all around. We then went up into the mountains where they herd sheep on horses. You can see their communication with nature ... which the people in the city have totally lost.

"I hope this film will give people a far greater understanding of the traditional beauty of this culture," Voina says. "In our previous Kazakh film series we looked at the past and at the destruction of the war. This looks more at the beauty and warmth of the traditional family culture."


Looking at the country's near and distant past, special emphasis in the films on the changing roles of family and gender shows not only how cultural traditions are being tested but also how women are leading this modern hybrid Eurasian nation forward.

"It is a complex society," notes Bowdoin Professor of Russian Jane Knox-Voina. "There is an asphalt generation of young people in the city who don't know their language, roots, ancestors, traditions. They were schooled in Soviet culture, which downplayed any ethnic tradition, and they now consider themselves European, not Asian.

"Yet many Kazakh women are uncomfortable with the global and modern. They were bearers of the traditional who came into the cities and had to try to keep the families together and support them. Kazakh film today looks at this great divide."

The film forum is funded by a grant from the Maine Humanities Council, and sponsored by the Bowdoin College departments of Russian and Gender and Women's Studies, and the International Research Exchange.

Tuesday, November 6

10 a.m. "The Making of Gender Documentaries: Problems of Central Asian Women"
Master Class with Elena Stishova, gender and film critic, Moscow.
Language Media Center Viewing Room, Sills Hall

7 p.m. "Screenings — Gender Montage: Paradigms in Soviet Space"
Central Asian documentaries on women's problems ranging from poverty to drug trafficking to slave markets. Q & A following, led by Elena Stishova and Kristen Ghodsee, assistant professor, Gender and Women's Studies Program.
Language Media Center Viewing Room, Sills Hall

Wednesday, November 7

7 p.m. Film Screenings and Q & A
Curtis Memorial Library, Brunswick

Pure Coolness, a full feature comic social drama about bride kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan, directed by Ernest Abdyzhparov. Winner of the 2002 Eurasia Film Festival.

Bride Kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan, Petr Lom's illuminating documentary about what many Westerners might consider a shocking social custom.

Followed by a Q & A with Jane Knox-Voina, Professor of Russian; Elena Stishova; and Gulnara Abikeeva, Kazakh film critic and former Fulbright Exchange Film Scholar, Bowdoin College.

Thursday, November 8

10 a.m. "Family and Women as the Cornerstone in Nation Building in Central Asia"
Master Class with Gulnara Abikeeva, who will discuss her recently published book.
Language Media Center Viewing Room, Sills Hall

4 p.m. Roundtable and Film Showing
Discussion and Q & A with Stishova, Abikeeva, Knox-Voina, and Ghodsee, along with a screening of the documentary Wishing for Seven Sons and One Daughter by Ali-Isla Djabbarov (2002).
Women's Resource Center, 24 College Street

Friday, November 9

7 p.m. "No-Man is My Name: Loss of Identity of Kazakh Speaking Chinese"
Screening of Waiting for Uighurstan, a documentary by Sean Roberts, Georgetown University, followed by a Q & A with Roberts and Shu-chin Tsui, director of the Asian Studies Program and film scholar.
Visual Arts Center, Beam Classroom

Saturday, November 10

10:30 a.m. Film Screenings, Discussion, and Lunch
Screening of Crazy Quilt and Two Faces of a Nation at the Eveningstar Cinema, Tontine Mall, Brunswick, followed by a discussion with Jane Knox-Voina; Vida Johnson, Russian and Central Asian film specialist, Tufts University; Gulnara Abikeeva; Elena Stishova; and Carol Lestock Lord, interpreter. A free luncheon of Kazakh food with Kazakh music will conclude the event.

The short documentary, Two Faces of a Nation (Silkway Films, USA, Inc., 2007), was produced by Jane Knox-Voina, and Bowdoin students Samuel Chapple-Sokol '07, Alden Karr '07, John Greene '07, Anton Handel '07, and Joseph Kellner '09, who together with Kenzhebai Dusembaev filmed their material onsite in Kazakhstan. The film focuses on a return to the 1920s and 1930s in search of traces of traditional Kazakh life wiped out by Sovietization, collectivization, purges, and post-Soviet modernization, and provides a mosaic of images illustrating how certain Kazakh film directors form a new vanguard to repossess memory and recreate a national self-identity.

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