Saodat Ismailova Her Five Lives

In the video Her Five Lives Saodat Ismailova, an important voice in the post-Soviet art of Central Asia, traces the transformation of the female image in Uzbekistan through the history of cinema in her country.

In this film the artist uses the supercut, a technique typical of essayistic practices involving short film and video excerpts linked by a single theme or visual motif. Her Five Lives is created from Uzbek films (with female characters) shot over the course of a century. The earliest is Vyacheslav Viskovsky’s The Minaret of Death, which dates to 1925.

The bringing together of various subjects, some very personal and others referring to major historical narratives, creates an image of a woman traveling through her "five lives," five stages in the history of Uzbekistan. Using a feminist lens that is sensitive to the manifestation of violence and the distribution of power, the artist constructs a three-dimensional picture of the position of women in the social and political life of the country. The visuals are supported by a complex audio landscape formed of music written for Uzbek cinema.