SUMMARY:

This article examines the new Kazakh nation-state’s attempt to provide a history to its people and how this attempt functions as a sort of “nomadic nationhood”: an ongoing, vibrant process of building both a sense of national identity and a sense of historical remembrance that center on nomads. The state has taken the lead in this nation-building exercise, and Kazakh films, often relying on state support, have also played a starring role. Surveying a number of recent Kazakh films, the author argues that Kazakh filmmakers, responding to President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s calls to create national narratives, have turned to nomads and the nomadic past as the source for Kazakh nationhood and remembrance. The reception among Kazakh citizens has produced a mixed bag: many audience members have celebrated what they see as a “new Kazakh patriotism” articulated onscreen. Others have criticized certain aspects of the onscreen nomadic nationhood, particularly the Kazakh state’s role in promoting it and Kazakh filmmakers’ adaptation of Hollywood techniques. Still others have stayed away from Kazakh films entirely, choosing instead to check out the latest Hollywood blockbusters. As a result, Nazarbayev declared in late 2009 that Kazakh filmmakers should start to pay more attention to the present and not just the past, but the cinematic nomadic nationhood has not stopped. The May 2012 film Myn Bala [A Thousand Boys] mines the same historical territory as 2005’s The Nomad, the film that in many ways initiated the new Kazakh cinema’s turn to the nomadic past.