Tradition and modernity meet in artist Saodat Ismailova’s feature debut.
Young Bibicha has taken a forty-day vow of silence in the hope that her lover, who has disappeared, will return. She hides from prying eyes at the home of her grandmother, where the girl’s illegitimate cousin also lives. The older woman supports her granddaughter but suspects that Bibicha’s silence and her desire to hide from the outside world conceals another secret.
In her video and film works, Saodat Ismailova, an artist and director who was born in Uzbekistan, explores various aspects of traditional Uzbek society. She demonstrates the multi-layered nature of the space of the characters in 40 Days of Silence: modernity, the collective memory that is revealed in the grandmother’s stories, traditions, family myths, and rituals. Women of various ages and backgrounds meet at Bibicha’s grandmother’s house and react in various ways to her vow of silence. Each person embodies different facets of the possible existence of a woman in such a world: for some it is freedom of choice, for others a broken future and the harsh suppression of her own will.
The space of the screen is full of the silent tension with which Bibicha studies the behavior of her relatives and absorbs their stories. It demonstrates the dual nature of her situation as an outside observer and a participant who is eternally linked to the past. The scenes in which women gather together reproduce the traditional subjects of paintings and the movement of their bodies and the position of objects seem to be a repetition of ancient iconography. Whether lonely or rebelling, like Bibicha’s aunt, the women taken on sharp and unpredictable positions that are nothing like deliberate poses but bear the stamp of female mythology. 40 Days of Silence does not employ the obvious dichotomy of modernity and tradition, instead highlighting a multifaceted and complex reality that does not exclude simultaneous rebellion and obedience.
40 Days of Silence was part of the Forum program at the 64th Berlin Film Festival and was also part of the artist’s retrospective at the Eye Filmmuseum (Amsterdam) in 2023.
After the screening there will be a discussion of the film with a Garage mediator during which viewers can exchange opinions and ideas about what they have seen. The discussion will be constructed as a dialogue of equals in which the impressions and thoughts of every participant are important. The mediator will gently direct and moderate the conversation. The meeting will last one hour. Participation is free.
40 Days of Silence
Director Saodat Ismailova
Netherlands, Uzbekistan, Germany, France, 2014. 88 min.
18+