CINEMA AS BRANDING - Tourism in Central Asia: Cultural Potential and Challenges - page 180

representations of the past, were able to reflect both perspectives. Their
work helped to see the complexity of the historical situation on the Kazakh
steppe from the standpoint of the Kazakh society, as I argue below.
One of the first known records of the story of Ablai belongs to Bukhar
zhirau (1693-1787), a traditional Kazakh songwriter and storyteller and
a long-term companion of Ablai. He supported Ablai as a member of his
entourage, but at the same time he tried to exert “a pedagogical influence”
on him (Winner, 1958). This blend of admiration and critique, so charac-
teristic to Bukhar zhirau, shaped the grounds for a future genre of social
critique within the Kazakh literature (ibid). His work also set the tone
for subsequent interpretations of Ablai's life by Kazakh writers. 12 Two ac-
counts stand out: an essay entitled Ablai by Chokan Valikhanov (1835-
1865) and a novel entitled Desperation [ Zhastalas ] by Illias Yessenberlin
(1973). 13 Grounded in ethnographic research, these are ample efforts of
addressing oral sources from the vantage point of their time. Both works
are my key sources. 14
The proliferation of literacy within the Kazakh society did not erase
possibilities for multiple interpretations of the story of Ablai. Even today
the story is not singular. People keep it 'alive' by investing the old story
with the new meanings. In this regard, who else, if not Ablai, would make
a better candidate for a lead character in a national epic film? Being part of
this process myself, I think that the Kazakh storytellers and writers have
left promising leads for the story of Ablai to be attuned to the realities of
the post-independent Kazakhstan and told through a visual medium in a
new and exciting way.
ABLAI IN ORAL TRADITION
Narratives of Ablai embody historical assumptions of power and identity
in the Kazakh society, a product of cultural interaction at a crossroad of
12 Most of these works are cited further in the text.
13 This novel is the second novel in his historical trilogy Nomads [ Köshpendiler ]. The name of this tril-
ogy apparently lent itself to the title of the Nomad film in a version released in Kazakhstan.
14 Bukhar zhirau's verses were often performed by traditional song-writers and story-tellers, which
helped them to be recorded by Russian ethnographers (e.g., Sobolev 1940). Later, his verses went into
a collection of Kazakh poetry (Dzharmagambetov et al., 1958: 65 - 89). Ablai's story has been a recur-
rent theme in a Kazakh literary and history research, perhaps since the time of his death. Apart from
Valikhanov and Yessenberlin, there are accounts dated from the early 20th century till now (Bokeikha-
nov [1903] 1995; Kasymbaev (1991; 1999a; 1999b; 2003).