Destination: Tashkent

Taking place at various venues across Berlin and Tashkent, Destination: Tashkent is a festival for film and discourse that is initiated by Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) and Goethe Institute Uzbekistan. Its programme draws upon the history and approach of the Tashkent Festival for Asian, African and Latin American Cinema, which was held between 1968 and 1988 in Uzbekistan. The festival in Tashkent was also one of the most important destinations for filmmakers from the South who wanted not only to present their films but also to share a discursive and convivial space for long-lasting exchange and solidarity. It was an experience of cinematic internationalism and a “contact zone”, taking place in a city that was eventually forced to confront its own (semi-)colonial present within the Soviet Union.

After being centrally in the shadows of the Cold War and its dislocations, Berlin has emerged as an important epicentre of the African, Latin American, and Asian diasporas and, against the backdrop of its particular historical context, can rightly claim to be a new meeting place for South-South collaborations along the lines of Tashkent. Destination: Tashkent explores these creative and collaborative synergies within the diasporic sphere of Berlin and critically examines what and how can be learned from the experiences of the former Tashkent Festival in order to define a space of possibilities between Tashkent and Berlin in the past as well as the present and the future.

Following a prologue that took place in Tashkent in September, the festival’s spirit is alive in Berlin at HKW and SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA. The program features a selection of films that demonstrate the diversity of the original festival’s programming, as well as contemporary films from Central Asia and the Berlin diaspora of three continents. Some screenings are accompanied by live commentary, while a discursive programme expands the conversations around the Tashkent Festival and its traces in today's film festivals, film productions and distribution networks. A reader with texts and talks, archive finds and results of curatorial research on site will be published to accompany the festival and presented in Berlin during the program.