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Dispatches From Xinjiang: The Blind Voice Of The New Silk Road
This week is the screening of the seventh segment of the first round of The Voice of the Silk Road – a show that hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs watch every Friday night at 8 pm local time on...
View ArticleDispatches From Xinjiang: Uyghur Kids And Their “Dream From The Heart”
PPTV version of the above video here for those without access to YouTube. A recent Uyghur-language short film called “Dream From the Heart” (English and Chinese subtitles) tells the story of a group...
View ArticleDispatches From Xinjiang: “Lift” And The Future Of Uyghur Film
When Memetjan Semet first came to Urumchi he remembers being shocked at how isolated everyone felt from each other. For the first time in his life he didn’t have his family and childhood friends to...
View ArticleDispatches From Xinjiang: The Edge of the Bazaar, A Documentary About Uyghur...
One of the emerging trends among young Uyghur film directors is a new attention to documentary filmmaking. This approach has long been a part of Uyghur cinema, but previously it was often part of a...
View ArticleDispatches From Xinjiang: The Poetic, Timeless Solitude In Tahir Hamut’s...
One of the driving forces in the Uyghur film scene is a filmmaker and poet named Tahir Hamut. A graduate of Beijing’s National Minorities University, Tahir began his academic career as one of the...
View ArticleDispatches From Xinjiang: The Future Of Uyghur Tradition In “Rahime,” A Short...
In the short film Rahime, the Uyghur ethnomusicologist and filmmaker Mukaddas Mijit portrays a moment in the life of her grandmother. When she was coming up with the theme for the short film, Mukaddas...
View ArticleDispatches From Xinjiang: New Short Film Looks At Uyghur Housewives And...
A few weeks ago when talking to a Uyghur acquaintance, I was told: “One the biggest problems among Uyghurs today is the rate of divorce. I think it is as high as 70 percent. Most of it is the fault of...
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Dispatches From Xinjiang: On The First Uyghur Contemporary Art Show
The first Uyghur contemporary art exhibition was launched at Xinjiang Contemporary Art Museum on May 16, attended by several hundred people from across the province, including most of the represented...
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Dispatches From Xinjiang: Ali K.’s “Burial” Photo Series
Last weekend I went to Gulsay Cemetery at the south end of Ürümchi, back behind the power plants right next to the lowest foothill of the eastern section of Heavenly Mountains. Many Uyghur, Kazakh,...
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Dispatches From Xinjiang: Carolyn Drake’s Book Of Xinjiang Photography, “Wild...
Many fantastic reviews have been written about Carolyn Drake’s new book of Xinjiang photography Wild Pigeon. Ian Johnson from the New York Review of Books commented on her innovative use of...
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Dispatches From Xinjiang: Qurbanjan Semet’s Photobook “I Am From Xinjiang On...
Initially many Uyghurs were excited about the Uyghur photographer Qurbanjan Semet’s book-length photo essay I am from Xinjiang on the Silk Road. They were thrilled to see Qurbanjan’s national...
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Dispatches From Xinjiang: New Uyghur Interior Design And Dilmurat Abdukadir’s...
On the top floor of the Aq Saray, or White Palace, hotel in Ürümchi is a massive reproduction of Napoleon Crossing the Alps by Jacques-Louis David. It is flanked on its left by a reproduction of Ivan...
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Dispatches From Xinjiang: Uyghur Restaurant Eden Arrives In America To Mixed...
Back in April, signs of the famous Uyghur restaurant chain Herembağ (Eden) began to appear on the streets of San Francisco. A few months later, a location in Fremont was opened in a renovated hotpot...
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Dispatches From Xinjiang: Uyghurs And “Terrorism”
In a recent article James Leibold, a scholar at La Trobe University in Australia, discussed the way ethnic minority struggles against police and structural violence has often been officially...
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Dispatches From Xinjiang: Uyghur Urbanism in Recent Modernist Poetry
Self-Portrait in a detail of Yarmemet Niyaz’s 2013 painting “蓝色的旅律” A good while ago the anthropologist Stevan Harrell asked me to consider the unique position of Uyghurs as heirs to an urbanism that...
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