Translated with AI
The Taliban movement in power in Kabul has closed the offices of the only state film institution in the country, the Afghan Film studio. This was reported by Fergana.ru with reference to Amu.tv.
The Taliban made no official announcement about the closure of the company. However, employees were informed that the institution's structure had been abolished and its activities suspended.
The last known head of the Afghan Film Agency, Sahara Karimi, fled the country in August 2021 when the Taliban took over Kabul. Since then, the film company has been operating at a reduced level, without much publicity or new projects.
Meanwhile, the studio is home to a valuable film archive that was saved during the Taliban's first reign in the 1990s. Its fate is now uncertain. Cultural preservationists fear that the archive could be abandoned, censored or destroyed.
Afghan Film, a national film company, was established in 1968 during the reign of King Mohammad Zahir Shah. It was the backbone of Afghanistan’s film and documentary industries. Before the Taliban took over in 2021, Afghan Film operated under the Ministry of Information and Culture and employed 30 to 40 people in various departments, including production, archiving, film restoration, and digitization.
With the Taliban coming to power in Afghanistan, many restrictions have been introduced. In particular, it is forbidden to show photos and videos of people in the media, listen to music, women are excluded from public life, they are not allowed to study, work, leave the house without a man, and so on. Chess and some types of martial arts are also banned.
For many artists and historians, the closure of the Afghan Film Foundation was a devastating loss. It followed the weakening or destruction of numerous cultural institutions under Taliban rule and is seen by many as part of an ongoing effort to erase public memory and silence the arts.
