This project engages with the production of cinematic content in the Central Asian Republics (CARs) since their independence. It explores film production as part of a media industry that has potential political power, and as a means of creating narratives about national history and identity. The research project examines recent geopolitical changes and questions how and to what extent the CARs, as former Soviet socialist republics, have mastered the transition from a nationalised cultural sector to de-centralised market structures, and which new alliances have been shaped. Cinematic content and its production are studied within the mechanisms of the film industry, i.e., production, distribution and consumption, in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan (mapping cinematic territories), and by analysing selected – both state and independently produced – filmic examples which write or undermine traditional (hi)stories ("soft power"). By combining methods of cultural, film and media studies, the research project puts the film business in Central Asia into a global context.
