Neither Live Nor Die in Tashkent
Umida Akhmedova and Oleg Karpov, filmmakers from Tashkent, are in Berlin, before leaving we watch and discuss their film:
Neither Live Nor Die in Tashkent, 74′
Uzbek/Russian with English subtitles
The screening will be followed by a conversation moderated by Aysel Akhundova, Umida Akhmedova and Oleg Karpov.
Wednesday, 29 July 2026
7-9 pm
Galerie AC. Art & Dialogue
Donaustraße 84, 12043 Berlin
Neither Live Nor Die in Tashkent moves through the city of Tashkent, Uzbekistan in vignettes. Dissident artists at kitchen tables. Lavish parties thrown by oligarchs, where the daughter of Uzbekistan’s authoritarian president is the most anticipated and honored guest. The tragic killing of an artist, allegedly for political reasons. Different temporalities coexist. Modernity and tradition have not yet superseded one another; languages and points of reference are mashed into one another. And around all of it: dances, songs, and the unbearable sense of a never-ending party whose joy never quite arrives.
The film portrays an in-between time and place: the Tashkent that emerged in the aftermath of the collapse of the USSR, suspended in a transition that feels more like a limbo. Neither Live Nor Die in Tashkent illustrates what it means to be post-Soviet, and perhaps what it means to be post-*post*-Soviet. _Aysel Akhundova
Umida Akhmedova is a documentary filmmaker and photographer from Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Her practice moves between documentary image, visual anthropology, and the close observation of everyday life across Central Asia. She has been persecuted by the Uzbek authorities for her critical work. In 2016, she received the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize, awarded for dissent in creative practice. Her works have been presented at international exhibitions, biennials and film festivals in Tbilisi, Copenhagen, Bilbao, Riga, Bishkek and Winterthur.
Oleg Karpov is a filmmaker, critic, curator, and collector from Tashkent, Uzbekistan. His practice moves between cinema, visual research, archives, and curatorial work. He organized and curated the Museum of Cinema in Tashkent (2004–2009) and the independent festival videoART.uz (2007–2017), and has helped shape spaces for film, video art, and visual culture in Uzbekistan through the CDO video library and the Turkestan Archive. He has written and directed over a hundred films, many in collaboration with Umida Akhmedova.
Aysel Akhundova (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker, cultural organizer and writer from Baku, Azerbaijan, based in Berlin. Working through a decolonial and feminist lens across performance, video, and writing, her practice returns to water, memory, myth and the peripheries of empire. She is one quarter of Salt Traces, an artist collective reflecting on the fate of the Caspian Sea.