The Question of Her Image: Women in Central Asian Cinema

From Soviet classics to contemporary works, Central Asian cinema has repeatedly placed women on screen — as workers, mothers, lovers, and heroines. Yet the distance between what these images promised and what they revealed remains striking. This lecture looks at how different moments in film history shaped women’s representation, how certain archetypes persisted, and where filmmakers began to carve out space for more complex, contradictory portraits. Set alongside the screenings, the talk offers context for understanding how women’s images have been constructed, inherited, and reimagined across five decades of filmmaking. (Malika Mukhamejan)