Yakut, Bashkir, Tatar, and other RF Cinemas as a Movement for National Self-identification

• In Event: Discourses of Liberation: Finding Identity in Cinema in Post-Soviet Space

Abstract

In the last decade, the cinemas of the Asian regions in the RF (from Altai to Kalmykia) have been active in representing their cultural identity. This has been especially pronounced in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), where movements in cinema began already in the 2000s. Typically, films were filled with ethnography, history, and tradition, such as the Yakut film "God Dyosegey" by S. Potonov, before an anti-colonial discourse begins to emerge in "Aita" by S. Burnashev or "Ichchi" by K. Marsan. Sakha cinema was most advanced not only in the political and social context, but also most distinctive and colorful in terms of national identity. The cinema of Tatarstan, despite its longer history and better financing conditions, lags behind in this regard, but there are interesting moments of religious Muslim self-identification. Other regions such as Bashkortostan, Kalmykia, Tyva, Altai, or Khakassia are represented literally by a single director, yet their works testify to a general move towards national self-determination

Author

• Gulnara Abikeyeva, Turan U (Kazakhstan)