Uzbekistan Film Festival

Fancy trying something a bit different this weekend? Cinema experiences don't come much more different than the 1st Festival of Films from Uzbekistan at the Phoenix. This festival selection offer films new to the West and celebrates 50 years of film-making in the heart of Central Asia, compiled from a library of more than 300 feature films dating back to 1924. The featured films are a double bill (Tenderness and Lovers) set in swinging sixties Tashkent, The Silver Bullet, a spaghetti-western style tale of bandits set in the 1920's, Alisher Navoi, a 14th century historical epic in the Henry V vein, and the acclaimed 1998 feature Orator, (which has just won the 1999 Grand Prix and Jury Prize at the leading CIS Film Festival in the Crimea) which deals with the clash of cultures that follows the arrival of Bolsheviks into the quiet backwater of Central Asia in the early 1920's after the 1917 Revolution. If the unusual films are not enough to entice you in on their own, there is a promise that all members of the audience can indulge in free iced shots of Uzbekistan vodka, green tea and pistachios. Really, how can you resist?

Fiona Lidy