ABSTRACT
In the early Soviet era, nationalities policies were working at full speed. They radically transformed national identities, through a massive and often violent process of modernisation: cinema gives a perfect insight into this process. This article focusses on silent long-feature films produced in Uzbekistan between 1924 and 1936, and the first Uzbek talking movie released in 1937. These films include valuable ones made by native film-makers such as Nabi Ganiev and Suleyman Khojaev, as well as by cinematographers from Soviet Russia. Uzbekistan is unique in Central Asia, since in the other republics, native film-makers came onto the scene only later – during or after the Second World War. I analyse these films of diverse quality through a classic narrative analysis – that is, an in-depth study of their production context and reception. These films proved a perfect object to examine state-building and nation-building, and the socio-political history of Uzbekistan in the 1920s and 1930s. This film history provides a precise radiography of the scale and the stages of the transformations that occurred in Central Asia in the interwar period, as Central Asian nation-states rose from the ashes of the colonial system.
