Waiting for Uighurstan (Documentary, 1996)

“Waiting for Uighurstan,” Sean R. Roberts and the Center for Visual Anthropology, University of Southern California, 1996

This documentary was filmed in 1994 while I was doing fieldwork in Kazakhstan and the Uyghur region of China, and it was submitted for my MA in Visual Anthropology at the University of Southern California. It follows the life stories of three Uyghurs who were born in the Uyghur region of China, fled to Kazakhstan during the 1950s and 1960s, and renewed ties with family members inside China after the re-opening of the Sino-Soviet border in the late 1980s. In particular, the film documents the strong borderlands Uyghur culture that was developing in Kazakhstan and the north of the Uyghur region during the 1990s and how that culture helped to fuel Uyghur calls for self-determination in the later 1990s.