CINEMA AS BRANDING - Tourism in Central Asia: Cultural Potential and Challenges - page 179

riors and leaders emerged among the Kazakhs in response to the tragedy
of 1723, and Ablai (given name Abulmansur) was only one of them. What
makes his story part of collective memory are his character and his politi-
cal career, which unfolds within the historical context, which in addition
to Jungars, involved other significant political actors: his home rivalries
as well as China and Russia who started making inroads to the steppe
in the 18th century. Traditionally, the warfare with Jungars and the story
of Ablai have been different historical narratives in terms of genre and
message amid periodic intersections. The film-makers, on the other hand,
tainted this convention by synchronizing the two episodes in a single sto-
ryline. Ablai, in the cinematic rendering of the story, is a long-awaited
Kazakh warrior who mobilizes his people for a successful counterattack.
His character is used as a symbolic means to achieve a moral closure to the
drama of Aktaban Shubirindy and convey the rebirth of the nation. What
has come out of this transformation and reduction of both historical facts
and oral tradition?
I have organized my discussion in a 'braided' fashion: the cinematic
image of Ablai is just one strand, whereas the other two are my attempts
to (a) tell his story from oral tradition and (b) locate it within a broader
historical context by drawing on contemporary history literature. 10 I am
aware that the mixing of a Western tradition of recording the past and an
oral tradition giving retrospective significance to events and personalities
is conducive of methodological flaws.11 11 Toby Morantz reminds us, that
the differences in philosophies and discursive conventions, the absence
of a shared narrative in oral tradition privileging localized stories as well
as cultural remoteness of researchers from oral sources handicap the pos-
sibilities for writing adequate “blended stories” (2002). This is why I have
chosen to discuss the story of Ablai and the historical context within which
it took place separately.
I should explain that unlike many ethnohistorians, I did not face a chal-
lenge of acting as a cultural translator of oral tradition. The exposure to
the Western tradition via a Russian educational system of some Kazakhs
in the 19th century, and the society as a whole during the Soviet period
has generated a pool of bicultural and bilingual specialists who, in their
10 I draw on Natalie Davis' notion of “braided history,” specifying “that history must tell everyone's
story on equal terms” (2001, cited from: Morantz 2002: 3).
11 For an in-depth discussion of this issue see Cruickshank (1998, especially, p. 41) and Burt (1998:
97 - 118).