Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: EMPIRE LINES
Episode: Melted into the Sun, Saodat Ismailova (2024) (EMPIRE LINES x Fondazione In Between Art Film, Venice Biennale)
Description: Filmmaker Saodat Ismailova traces stories of spirituality, dissent, and environmental extraction around the Aral Sea from post-Soviet Uzbekistan and Central Asia, via Melted into the Sun (2024).
Uzbekistan is at the crossroads of diverse material histories and migratory legacies. Part of ‘Central Asia’ - first defined by the Prussian geographer Alexander von Humboldt in 1843 - the region was governed by the Uzbek branch of the Soviet Russian Communist Party in the 20th century, until the Union’s collapse in 1990. As one of the first generÂations of post-Soviet Central Asian contemporary artists, Saodat Ismailova often draws on shar...