February 4, 2013
"The Eastern International: Soviet Central Asia and the Afro-Asian Colonial World"
Jordan Center Occasional Series
with Masha Kirasirova
53 Washington Square South, Room 701
2:00 PM to 4:00 PM EST
This talk argues that changes in production and consumption Soviet cinema after the mid-1950s offer a dramatic example of how Soviet interventionism in the decolonizing “Third World” led to the emergence of new institutions and narratives tasked with mediating Soviet “Easternness” for external Afro-Asian audiences. More specifically, by focusing on the career of the iconic Central Asian film director, Kamil Yarmatov, Kirasirova argues that this Soviet courtship of “Third World” audiences contributed to a demand – articulated at the highest levels of power – for a new spectacular foundational narrative of the establishment of Soviet rule in Central Asia. Performances of such revolutionary narratives before Afro-Asian audiences often involved creative blurring of historical and imaginary pasts.Masha Kirasirova is a PhD Candidate in the join NYU History and Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies Program. She is currently finishing her dissertation about Soviet-Arab exchanges from the interwar period to the Cold War.
