“Rivers are the biographers of landscapes, carrying
the tales of the people & foxes & stones they flow among.
A new film by my friends at Adamdar/CA follows
the currents of the Chu—a wellspring of Central Asian
nomad culture, now facing ecological disaster.”
The documentary film, «River of Nomads» is a product of a cultural research expedition. In May 2021, Adamdar/CA project’s team of explorers, documentarians, and artists from Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan carried out an expedition from the source to the mouth of the Chu river. The expedition was a part of Adamdar/CA's eco-cultural project JerSu.
The group crossed over 2500 kilometers along the Chu river, from the source under the glaciers in the Naryn region of the Kyrgyz Republic to its mouth in the steppes of Kazakhstan’s Jambyl province. The group gathered many stories—about the river, its meaning, its past, present and the future. Some of these stories made it into the documentary film «River of Nomads».
The film premiered in June 2021 at the Go Viral festival in Almaty, Kazakhstan. There were also two additional special screenings held in September 2021 at ololoErkindik in Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic, and in Almaty.
