Paper long abstract:

In postsocialist cinema of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, we can find a steady stream of films depicting harsh conditions in state-run institutions for children, acting as repositories or incubators for deviant youths, with a particular focus on the cultivation of violent masculinities within such sites. Examples from recent years include The Tribe (Ukraine, 2014, dir. Slaboshpytskiy), Amok (N. Macedonia, 2016, Tozija), and No One’s Child (2014, Serbia, Rsumović). This presentation will examine post-independence films of Kazakhstan that thematize a lack of adult care, whether because children are partially or completely orphaned or because of placement in an institutional setting. The paper will compare portrayals of peer cruelty to which the un-cared-for child becomes vulnerable, and the psychological effects of both abandonment and abuse. The main focus of this analysis will be Darezhan Omirbayev’s Cardiogram (1995), Emir Baigazin’s Harmony Lessons (2013), Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s The Owners (2014), and Zhanna Isabaeva’s Bopem (2015). While Omirbayev’s earlier film contrasts in several ways from the others (and while each of these distinguishes itself in a number of ways), these films underline the failures not only of state institutions but also of communities to protect their most vulnerable, sometimes resulting in deviance, with youths seeking revenge on the social institutions that have failed it. They highlight anxiety about the effects on child development regarding the breakdown of the family. I consider these films in the context of post-Soviet Kazakhstan, where I conducted fieldwork within a state-run institution. The institutionalization of children deprived of parental care was generally seen as a necessary evil that needed eventually to be replaced with other forms of care. I argue that the films of Kazakhstan, in contrast with the abovementioned films of Eastern Europe, give further attention to the temporary or permanent breakdown of the family as a source of trauma.