Day Three -- Saturday -- 20 September 2025

Saodat Ismailova (b. 1981) is an Uzbek film director and artist whose work explores the history of women in Central Asia. A graduate in filmmaking from the Tashkent State Institute, she furthered her studies at Fabrica, a research and communication center in Italy, and now divides her time between Tashkent and Paris. She gained international recognition with Zukhra, a prize-winning video installation presented by the EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, and in 2014 premiered her debut feature film 40 Days of Silence at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it was nominated for Best First Feature. Alongside her film work, Ismailova has played a leading role in promoting Central Asian cinema and culture, founding the DAVRA collective in 2021 and creating the educational program CCA LAB in 2019. Her recent exhibitions include Q’org’on Chirog (2019), What Was My Name? (2021), Two Horizons (2022), and 18,000 Worlds (2022).

Since 2020, the women-led Artcom Platform has been developing new systems of care for Kazakhstan’s Lake Balkhash, one of the world’s largest lakes, now under severe threat from over-extraction, climate change, and the proposed construction of a nuclear plant on its shores. Drawing on Qazaqlïq—a semi-nomadic “steppe democracy” rooted in voluntary fugitivity and resistance to imposed constraints—the collective explores how traditional knowledge can guide ecological resilience. Using video as their primary medium, they created Balkhash Zhyry, a poetic video essay narrated from the perspective of the lake itself and presented within a reed-woven structure referencing steppe craft traditions. Artcom Platform also engages with Kazakhstan’s political realities: in the stairwell of a former courthouse, they installed a silent monument honoring those killed, detained, or tortured during the 2022 “Bloody January” uprising, a protest movement sparked by rising petroleum prices and met with violent state repression.