It’s not every day that a new movie is made in Turkmenistan. So official plans to release five new features before Independence Day on October 27 is reason to celebrate. Right?
This being tightly controlled Turkmenistan, mind you, the plots are predictable. A discriminating cinophile might even call them PR. State-run Turkmenistan.ru describes three:
The first, “The Song of Avaza,” is a musical comedy about two students at the seaside resort of Avaza, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov’s pet tourist trap on the Caspian. The second, “The Horse - My Wings,” tells the tale of an old breeder of Akhal-Teke horses (Berdymukhamedov’s favorite) who is teaching his grandson the trade.
Turkmenistan.ru’s descriptions leave no platitude ignored. A third film, “Student Life,” is about the joys of being a student in independent Turkmenistan: “Along with the protagonists of the movie, the viewer is taken up by real student life, where the responsibilities of studying and the thirst for knowledge come together with inseparable friendships, first love, and the first independent steps toward adulthood.”
On its Facebook page, Salam Turkmen, group that aggregates and comments on news about Turkmenistan, interprets the film as a demonstration of Berdymukhamedov’s love for the youth of Turkmenistan, to which one commenter bemoans, "Again the same thing, along the same path. Unfortunately."
True, it is thanks to Berdymukhamedov that even these attempts at filmmaking happen.
A song by an Uzbek pop diva about recent ethnic violence in southern Kyrgyzstan has created a fresh furor as Uzbeks and Kyrgyz continue to trade recriminations about who was responsible for the bloodletting that left hundreds if not thousands dead.
Pop star Yulduz Usmanova – whose music is wildly popular across Central Asia and in Russia and Turkey – has released a song in Uzbek about the violence in Osh, in which both ethnic Uzbek and ethnic Kyrgyz died but the Uzbek community appears to have suffered the most.
In her song "To the Kyrgyz," Usmanova asks emotionally: “What was this bloodshed for? Don’t you have a conscience? Ah, my Kyrgyz, how cheaply you’ve sold yourselves and destroyed your wellbeing.”
She also hinted at reports that the violence was instigated by provocateurs who paid locals to take part in attacks on Uzbek neighborhoods:
“Don’t trust every hand that gives you bread; don’t rejoice in victory for nothing. You’ve inflicted pain on the souls of my Uzbek people; don’t regret it tomorrow.”
“If you kill and strangle each ethnic group, who will stay in the land of the Kyrgyz?” Usmanova asks in the song, to accompanying images of people fleeing, people in burnt-out houses, APCs driving through city streets and houses belonging to ethnic Uzbeks painted with SOS signs in a desperate plea for help.
Unsurprisingly, the song has drawn criticism from cultural figures in Kyrgyzstan, who accuse Usmanova of stoking tension. Kyrgyz composer Gulshair Sadybakasova said singers had a responsibility “to promote peace and accord in society.”
