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UZBEK CINEMA: A SLOW REVIVAL
Vladimir MESAMED
Vladimir Mesamed, Researcher, Harry Truman Institute at the Jewish University in Jerusalem (Israel)
The Soviet Union’s collapse not only had an impact on the sociopolitical situation in the former Soviet republics, but also on the state of affairs in science and art, including cinematography. Marked by many common or similar traits, Soviet cinema, as the unity and synthesis of its national components, disintegrated into purely national parts, finally breaking free from Moscow’s ideological grasp. This also led to the cinema art (and its parts) of the newly independent states breaking its decades-long ties with the cinematography of other former union republics, primarily Russia. The difficulties experienced by all these countries during the transition to a market economy also took their toll on the national film industry, including in Uzbekistan, the only post-Soviet republic in which local cinematography has centralized financial support. (When a film production and rental market is just forming, it is difficult to overestimate the state’s participation in encouraging and supporting this intricate process.)
Specialists and connoisseurs of this type of art have highly praised Uzbek cinema for its professionalism, national uniqueness, and originality. It is indicative that films began being produced here almost as soon as cinematography was invented. For example, a pioneer of Uzbek cinema, Khudoibergan Devanov, made the first documentary film in Khorezm as early as the spring of 1900. As for feature films, the first ones were made in Uzbekistan during the second half of the 1920s almost immediately after the formation of the Uzbek S.S.R., with the help of Russian masters. During the next decade, local teams of directors, cameramen, scriptwriters, and other creative specialists appeared and began their professional activity. The quality of films gradually improved and their number increased. Whereas at the beginning of the 1950s, three feature films were made every year at the Uzbekfilm studio, by the mid-1980s, during the heyday of local cinematography, this number had leaped to twelve. Whereby nearly every year, one of…………………..
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