Zulfiqor Musoqov’s Abdulladzhan, or Dedicated to Steven Spielberg
Tuesday, July 28, 2026 at 7pm
Light Industry, 361 Stagg Street, Suite 407, Brooklyn
Introduced by Collin Leitch
Abdulladzhan, or Dedicated to Steven Spielberg, Zulfiqor Musaqov, 1991, digital projection, 89 mins
The first film by Zulfiqor Musaqov, pioneer of post-independence cinema in Uzbekistan, Abdulladzhan, or Dedicated to Steven Spielberg is widely regarded as the first film released in the then-new Central Asian state following the break-up of the Soviet Union. Abdulladzhan is framed as a letter to the American director from an Uzbek security guard, informing him that the plot of E.T. bears an uncanny resemblance to recent events in his village. When a blond-haired alien boy crash lands on a collective farm and is taken in by a local man, who names him Abdulladzhan after his grandfather, the residents at first assume the boy is his illegitimate son by a Russian woman. Stranded without the keys to his ship, Abdulladzhan is consigned to a life of hard labor as a farmer’s son, but soon he begins to perform miracles which ease the fortunes of the kolkhozniks.
Musoqov’s narrator offers musings on Soviet science fiction, like Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (“I understood nothing, but I liked it”). Abdulladzhan’s own contribution to the genre features humble, home-spun special effects, but also set pieces where columns of Soviet armor and numerous air assets are deployed on location. Filming was completed in 1991, a most chaotic year in the collapsing USSR, and Abdulladzhan was first screened in Tashkent just days before the formal December 26th dissolution of the state. Events like the August Coup, or Gorbachev’s failure to secure a new union treaty feel oddly sublimated in the onscreen scrambling of jets, the procession of tanks, and the tears of the security official in Moscow pursuing Abdulladzhan, who is unable to control what is rapidly unfolding in a distant republic.
- CL
Tickets - Pay what you can ($10 suggested donation), available at door.
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