Electricity within: Islam, pre-Islamic traditions and secular forms of belief in contemporary Kyrgyz cinema

Abstract

ABSTRACT Although post-Soviet Central Asian societies self-identify as Muslim, spiritual identity is a highly contested subject in the region and one influenced by Russian imperialism and Soviet atheist ideology. In Kyrgyzstan, a transnational Islamic movement, the Tablighi Jama’at Network (TJN) calling for a purification of Islamic practices, competes not only with the practitioners of ‘Soviet traditional Islam’ deeply rooted in Kyrgyz ethnic customs and traditional culture, but also with the proponents of the pre-Islamic beliefs of Tengriism, all against the background of deeply-ingrained Soviet notions of modernity. On the basis of a close analysis of two Kyrygz films, Ernest Abdyzhaparov’s Saratan. Village Authorities (2004) and Aktan Arym Kubat’s Centaur (2017), this article examines negotiations of spiritual identity in contemporary Kyrgyz cinema at the intersection of global and local Islam, pre-Islamic traditions, and Soviet-imparted spiritual secularism as a complex process navigated by the Soviet generation of filmmakers who are apprehensive of Islamic global movements and emerging dominant religious narratives as an ‘alien’ ideology aiming to suppress Central Asians’ cultural diversity and authenticity. Responding to Russo-Soviet ideological imperialism and Islamic fundamentalism, these artists negotiate their culture’s multiplicity and ambivalence while drawing on regional diversity and nomadic roots.