Saodat Ismailova – 'We live in only one of the 18,000 worlds'

We used to have this species called Turan Tiger and these tigers were considered to be sacred

I decided to make this film as a kind of a farewell to the tiger because the memory of the tiger is gone but it’s just moved from what we live to the space of the dreams

It really touched me deeply that even if we lose things in the material space, but by losing it, it gets actually reinforced in other space within us

My name is Saodat Ismailova, I'm a filmmaker and artist from Uzbekistan

I work in the region, in Central Asia

I think that that’s what defines my practice which is geographically bound to the place where I come from

I looked at like what was the historical situation that brought the tiger to extinction?

And it came together with my great grandfather who has lived the transformation of the region into part of the Soviet Union and of course the first thing that the Soviets did in the region was to get rid of the local intellectuals or people that carried the local knowledge

And so that's how my great grandfather ended up in Gulag for 11 years and the other parts of the family were shot

I think that killing of knowledge, it’s actually an extinction

For me, if we speak about the point of hope it's related to the last shot of the film

I just was there with a camera and I filmed because there were these women coming and circling around this metallic structure

It's a Zoroastrian dakhma which means a site of a burial

It's not about looking back to the past but it's actually carrying the essential faith

I think it's about that

There is that flag stock that women go to worship

It was a Soviet metallic structure where they would put the flag

When the Soviet Union collapsed women have transformed it into an object of veneration because it reminds a tree

So that's also something very interesting for me

You know like this capacity of using what we have under our hands to an object of a hope

I think, and it might sound kind of strange, but I think that I actually continue what my grandmother was doing so I just use another type of tools but she was an amazing storyteller

This is a star and then it has other stars and there would be 40 around

So the older they go, there is more kind of these circularities and another beautiful part is that they are never finalised totally

Because if you finish, then you don't leave the life for the others

These works unfortunately are perceived today as decorative applied art but for us it was talismans most of the time

It's a very repetitive pattern but always with a very small change with the same school of embroidery, Tashkent embroidery, which is cosmic

It's called Falak and Falak means the universe

I read an article that the society would normally be scared of them and they would consider them as witches; not the stitch makers, but the ones that would draw

So the fear was related of figures that had the capacity to create

So any form of a creation was on one hand respected and on the other hand feared of, because a creation also has a capacity to go beyond regulations or patterns

18,000 Worlds, it's a work I have done in 2023

The film is inspired by just this phrase that my grandmother used to say a lot about the existence of the 18,000 worlds and that we live only in the one of the 18,000 worlds

I looked at the footage that I have put together within 20 years by travelling in the region and then I thought it would be interesting to think about what are the... what is a knowledge production?

You know, who is the one that creates the knowledge?

Who builds the narrative?

When the Soviet Union collapsed there was a big void and we didn't know what to attach ourself at

So the archives was very important for myself personally

What is there that will give you kind of an anchoring point?

And so there is a first period of fascination, looking at it as if it would be the truth right? The archives are also manipulated

This is also a narrative that is constructed, because who created the archives?

In our case they were done with the hand of the centre and the centre was Moscow

So and of course, the people that were behind the camera it was male crew, male teams

So somehow making 18,000 worlds and bringing my archives that come from the field of course but re-editing existing archives it’s also a way of rewriting and re-appropriating what was done by the other hands

These mats in the whole region they're called kurpacha

They are made of cotton and these are our basic everyday life objects

When the child is born he sleeps on them and the farewell of a dead person also happens on the kurpacha

So it's something that really goes through the whole life for us

If people fall asleep, it's beautiful and I find it more active experience for the audience because I don't want them to carry what what I want them to carry but rather I propose a situation where they can make their own conclusion or own narrative own experience and step out with that