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Paper long abstract:

This paper analyzes four feature films (Dokhunda (1956); Chelovek Menyaet Kozhu, 1959; Khasan Arbakesh, 1965) from Tajikfilm Studios released in the late 1950s and 1960s. Throughout the paper, I explore the relationship between the films and the literary works upon which they were based, as well as the film directors, screenwriters and writers' whose works provided the original source material.In addition to exploring the role of 'locals' and 'outsiders' in the creation of these cultural products, I argue that a discernible category of film emerged out of the Tajik Film Studios. While this type of film existed elsewhere in the Soviet Union around the same time, the Tajik context is important - starting with Dokhunda, the first Tajik feature film since the 1930s, these films exploration of the early period of Soviet rule in Tajikistan became an important way for articulating a visual Tajik national identity. Far from a preconceived notion of Tajik national identity, the diversity in the three films selected, indicative of a larger trend among Tajik Film Studio films, demonstrates that the vision of the Tajik nation, as had been the case in Tajik literature, past and present continued to be a contested process. This paper is based on the novels, poems, and corresponding films in question, as well as available newspaper sources from Pravda, Literaturnaia Gazeta, as well as a range of secondary sources.

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