Neither on the Mountain, nor in the Field

Overview

A film tapestry that weaves together different Kyrgyzstan’s colonial and postcolonial histories as well as the filmmaker’s personal biography. Gulzat Egemberdieva juxtaposes home videos, telephone conversations, Soviet archival footage and ethnographic sketches in order to construct a visual dialogue between Kyrgyz people of different generations and cultural backgrounds. The title refers to the sense of dislocation created by successive waves of migration and the imposition of national borders onto a once-nomadic people in the Pamir mountains.