Globalising the steppe: environment and identity in Ermek Tursunov’s Tengrist parables

Abstract

ABSTRACT Kazakhstani cinematic discourse on the environment has evolved from prioritising pressing nation-building and geopolitical objectives in the immediate post-independence era to proposing alternative models for human-nature relations and contributing important insights into the study of the Anthropocene. How has the sovereign Kazakhstan’s gradual integration into global systems and environmental discourses affected the ways in which Kazakhstani filmmakers depict the interrelationship between the local people and the environment, between the concerns of nation-building and local and global environmental challenges? This article takes as case study Ermek Tursunov’s cinematic parables set in the Kazakh lands, with a special focus on The Old Man (2012). The films explore indigenous epistemologies of nature rooted in the pre-Islamic Turkic religion of Tengrism, which centres on humankind’s relationship with nature mediated by the supreme deity Tengri, the Sky God. Drawing on the Tengrist worldview and his own experiences as a (post-) Soviet Kazakh eco-activist, athlete and filmmaker, Tursunov crafts a picture of Tengrism that is both ethnically particular and universal, as well as closely interrelated with other global phenomena, such as environmental concerns, soccer, and cinema. He thereby imagines a pan-human alternative to both old Soviet and new capitalist ecologies currently operating in Kazakhstan.