On the occasion of Saodat Ismailova’s exhibition, Amanat, please join us for a lecture and the premiere screening of a new film by Zumrad Mirzalieva—one of Ismailova’s frequent collaborators. Building on Mirzalieva’s research into the Tashkent Film Festival of Asian, African and Latin American Cinema, this lecture examines a space imagined as a South–South collaboration yet shaped by Soviet geopolitical agendas. Drawing from Mirzalieva’s short film, Tashkent 58-88 (2026), and archival fragments—including footage, newsreels, letters and the festival’s programming logic—she explores how anti-imperial images circulated through an imperial system and what these tensions reveal about broader solidarity movements. In doing so, Mirzalieva attempts to develop a critical methodology for reading this archive and its consequences within contemporary cultural politics.
