Homeland, Belonging, Survival: Kazakh and Uyghur Films in Focus (Part I)

Decolonial Documentation: Film Festival Featuring Kazakh and Uyghur Homeland, Belonging, and Survival (Part I)

Wednesday, February 5, 6:30 pm~10:30 pm EST

Innis Town Hall, Innis College, 2 Sussex Ave, Toronto, ON M5S 1J5

The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) is perhaps best known today as western China’s site of the largest mass internment of an ethno-religious group since WWII. Since 2018, the Chinese government has largely restricted access to international media, critical scholars, and diaspora communities; nonetheless, some of these individuals have developed creative and remote methods to reveal a grim colonial reality in a transnational and digital space through archiving and artistic solutions. Documentation itself has become a space for seeking truth and justice.

This event will screen films made by documentary filmmakers and scholars who have recorded the diaspora Kazakhs and Uyghurs’ visceral experiences of surviving the state violence and diverse narratives of homeland, belonging, and adapting to the host countries. These projects provide invaluable information about the violent realities unfolding in the Junggar and Tarim Basins – the traditional homelands for Kazakhs and Uyghurs. The screening will be followed by a moderated discussion with the filmmakers about grassroots activism and explore space for healing and building global solidarity.

Schedule

• doors open at 6:30 pm
• opening remarks & land acknowledgment at 6:45 pm
• screening starts at 7 pm
• Q&A from 9-9:45 pm
• 9:45-10:30 open reception in the lobby

Films

Testimonies, 25 min, Rune Steenberg and Zarina Mukanova

Letter Home, 10 min, Yadylar Ibraimov

Jumagul’s World, 18 min, Tilek Yrysbek

Echoes of Home, 43 min, Mirshad Ghalip and David Tobin

Moderators

Anup Grewal, Assistant Professor, Department of Historical and Cultural Studies, University of Toronto

Guldana Salimjan, SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Historical and Cultural Studies, University of Toronto

Sponsored by

SSHRC Partnership Development Grant, Xinjiang Documentation Project (Institute of Asian Research, School for Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia), Department of Historical and Cultural Studies (UTSC), Dr. David Chu Program in Asia Pacific Studies, The Emerging Interventions in Contemporary China Studies Working Group (Jackman Humanities Institute), Department of Historical Studies (UTM), Centre for Europe and Eurasian Studies, Department for the Study of Religion, Cinema Studies Institute, Women and Gender Studies Institute, University of Toronto

Please email [email protected] if you have any questions.

Host or Publisher Decolonial Documentation