A retrospective of the key video works from the program of the festival videoART.uz in the 2000s and early 2010s.
The golden age of Uzbekistan’s independent film and video art was relatively recent and short. The surge in the development of various experimental practices, informed by the local context and the complicated social situation, was facilitated by the festival videoART.uz and its creator and curator, the ambassador of Tashkent underground cinema Oleg Karpov.
Originally hosted by the semi-state-run Museum of Film, and never officially registered, the festival survived several attempts at closure by the local police, but persisted until the Museum was closed in 2010, and later moved to the underground scene. Several of the regular participants have built careers as directors, contemporary artists, musicians, art historians or curators.
This screening brings together a number of landmark films made by festival participants over the years, from analytical conceptual video pieces to blatantly provocative works that reflect the spirit of the era. The films in the program captured the end of the twenty-year post-Soviet period and the emergence of the postcolonial hybridity that has shaped the contemporary cultural context in Uzbekistan.
The screening will be followed by a Q& A with several filmmakers, Oleg Karpov, and the program curator Alexey Artamonov.
- Seven Views on Central Asian Postmodernism, Alexey Ulko, 2010, 24’
- What is the Idea Behind This Video, Alexander Barkovsky, 2008’
- Resettlement Program, Alexander Barkovsky, 2009, 2’
- Andersen, Sid Yanyshev, 2010, 6’
- Bathing of a Horse, Sid Yanyshev, 2010, 3’
- The Lumières No Longer Live Here, Umida Akhmedova and Oleg Karpov, 2011’
- Hostages of Eternity, Umida Akhmedova and Oleg Karpov, 2007, 30’
The festival of independent film videoART.uz launched at the Museum of Film in Tashkent in 2007. The 28 seasons of the festival, which took place over the ten years of its existence from 2007 to 2017, were recorded and published. The 23rd videoART.uz, which took place in Tashkent in 2012, was also the Central Asian Festival of Independent Film (CAFIF).