She from the sky
2025
single-channel video with sounds
33 minutes 52 seconds


This experimental documentary situated its historical context within the Khorezmian Archaeological-Ethnographic Expedition of the USSR in Kyzylkum and Karakum deserts in Central Asia (1937-1991). It was the biggest and the longest in the USSR, and a thousand archaeological sites were found and recorded. Now these are the territories of Uzbekistan (Karakalpakstan), Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. As a large-scale science project, it served the general Soviet ideological, colonial and industrialisation agenda in Central Asia. The archaeologists, through their innovative interdisciplinary collaboration with soil scientists and geomorphologists, alongside decades of extensive aerial surveying of ancient irrigation systems, involuntarily catalyzed the partial diversion of rivers, the development of hydroelectric facilities, and ultimately, the tragic vanishing of the Aral Sea. The desert took over, the expedition stopped, its story and huge archive dusted, and the empire collapsed.

Departing from this background, the film explores the possibilities of reconstruction - the reconstruction of topographies, civilizations, personal and collective memories, the psychological and physical restoration from ecological trauma. Following the morphing and wandering bodies of water, from the unidentifiable water deities to the disappearing Aral Sea, the narratives merge scientific and mystical-historical worldviews, piecing together fragments of intersecting and clashing temporalities - cosmic time, evolutionary time, vegetal time, cyclical time, and revolutionary time.

The film itself is a reconstruction that synthesizes diverse influences, including Central Asian water mythologies rooted in Zoroastrian texts; material and textual archives from the archaeological expeditions, and interviews with archaeologist, economist and ecologist in the Aral Sea region; Andrei Platonov's novel "Dzhan" in which a Soviet economist from Turkmen leaving Moscow in search of the perilous migration of a nomad nation across the Kara-Kum desert.



Writing, direction and editing: Shuyi Cao
Text translation and proofreading: Veronika Kandaurova, Olya Grinkrug
Production management: Maria Kalinina, Timur Sagigov
Cinematography and colour correction: Shakhzod Makhsudkhonov
Drone cinematography: Axror Tolipov
Music, sound design and mix: Le Luu Lien
Voice-over in Russian by Valentin Morozov, Andrey Pirog, Artem Veselov, Katerina Chuchalina
This film is commissioned by GES-2 House of Culture. 


 
© Shuyi Cao 2024