Uzbekistan: Special services censored films of the international forum

Participants of Tashkent’s International Animation Forum announced the requirement to preview films by the State Security Service.

According to critic Dina Goder, the festival was controlled from the first day by the National Security Service (an analogue of the Russian FSB).

“For the programs to be shown, their curators had to send films in advance to be censored,” she explains. Goder showed an hour-long animadoc program from Rudnick festival, of which 14 minutes were censored.

The international program of the Ukrainian Festival Linoleum, brought by Anastasia Verlinskaya, became the victim of the vigilance of the Uzbek security officers. The program of the Georgian festival Tofuzi, which Zurab Diasamidze refused to send in advance, but brought with him, cannot be shown without the permission of the State Security Service.

Two films from the program of children’s studios were banned. As Dina writes, “it was said that children made films that children shouldn’t watch (one of them was about teenagers who don’t like school; and the other one was with questions about discrimination against women).”

People in blue shirts tried to remove exhibits from the walls. They had been there for a long time, but they weren’t interested in them before. Then they stopped the show and started arguing with Program director Dante Rustav. After the lecture “Non-children’s cartoons” by Goder, where one of the examples was Joanna Quinn’s funny film “Art matters”, in addition, Rustav was accused of distributing pornography.

Sedition was also seen in the final exhibition of children’s master classes. “One of the boys had a gangster character. It was clear only from the last picture, where a hand with a gun was reaching out to him from behind the frame. This picture was demanded to be removed with a scandal. So, it was removed. I have no idea what it was,” said Dina Goder.

The three-day forum ended on April 24, but the details of its holding became known later. It was attended by animators from 11 countries.