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Abstract:

Soviet culture constructed a cultural hierarchy, with Russian culture placed at the top, while Central Asian culture was positioned as a lower part of this hierarchy. The soviet cultural hierarchy provide to justify portraying Central Asian culture as barbaric; however, it also served potential as a strategic tool for Central Asian cultural figures to establish a filed for representation of their own identity. Film, in particular, played a crucial role in reshaping the image of Central Asia that had been shaped since the period of Imperial Russia until the 1950, demonstrating the potential for self-representation linked to national identity. This panel reports on a study that analyzed the film "The Skies of Our Childhood (Небо нашего детства)" in relation to the Soviet cultural hierarchy to Kyrgyz film and its influence on self-representation. We chose to focus on Kyrgyz film for two main reasons: firstly, the Kyrgyz film studio was established later than other republics of Central Asian and not given an opportunity for showing own image in the screen, and secondly, despite its delayed establishment, Kyrgyz film produced many films admired in/ out Soviet, which were often called as the “Kyrgyz miracle”. Before 1960s, Kyrgyz cultural figures drew on the hierarchy to shape and show the Kyrgyz image associated with Kyrgyz identity. Many of these were based on Soviet ideology, resulting in the Kyrgyz image resembling that shaped by the hands of Russia/Soviet. In the 1960s, because of the period of thaw and the influence on heightened national consciousness, an opportunity emerged to change the image for the construction of national identity representations. The evaluation of films of the "Kyrgyz miracle" considered two perspectives: the "Soviet" perspective and the Kyrgyz perspective, rather than focusing on Kyrgyz evaluation." Although “The Skies of Our Childhood” was produced as a Soviet film, its representation distanced itself from the official ideology to ignore the framework of Soviet cultural imperialism.