‘Two Poets and a River’ Screening and Q&A

Using the Oxus River as a topos, this film explores themes of love and loss through the lives and musical poetry of the two most prominent and innovative Wakhi musicians in Central and South Asia: Qurbonsho in Tajikistan and Daulatsho in Afghanistan.

These two poet-singers share a common language, faith, and family network and yet remain separated by vicissitudes of the 19th century ‘Great Game’ in Central Asia.

In this struggle for strategic control, the Wakhan homeland of the Wakhi people became a buffer zone between Czarist Russia and the British Empire, and the river Oxus, which became the border, ran right through the centre of Wakhan. After the modern nation states of the USSR and Afghanistan shored up their boundaries circa 1930, the communities living along one side of the river were severed from their counterparts on the other side.

The specific condition of being separated by a river in the region has been the basis for poetry about the feeling of separation (firāq) in Persian and Wakhi poetry more generally and thereby grounds the poets’ discussions of love and loss in their own lives as well as in their musical arts. 

The ethnomusicologist-filmmaker Richard K. Wolf shot and produced the film over 2.5 years (2012-2020) with the editorial collaboration of both Qurbonsho and Daulatsho, who narrate the film in Wakhi, Tajik and Dari. It experiments with visual editing techniques to suggest possible relations of identity between persons and other persons or animals, and between emotions and landscapes. It also employs translucent overlays of photographs and moving images to evoke multiplicity and ambiguity, inspired by montage and collage in 20th and 21st century film and art.

Two Poets and a River (Documentary Educational Resources, 2021); 75 min

The film screening will be followed by a discussion.