Uzbekistan turns past to narrative for future

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan — As the last light faded over New Tashkent on Friday, hundreds of drones rose into the sky, forming moving images for a celebration of Uzbekistan's 35th anniversary of independence.

Music swept across the open-air venue. Uzbek dancers and musicians shared the stage with international stars, including British soprano Sarah Brightman, Italian tenor Alessandro Safina and Spanish tenor José Carreras. Giant 3D projections, robotics, lighting effects and an aerial display turned the evening into a carefully choreographed mixture of history, technology and spectacle.

President Shavkat Mirziyoyev joined the ceremony and delivered a speech outlining an ambitious national agenda for the decade ahead. The country's official Independence Day falls on Sept. 1, but this year's principal celebrations were staged several days earlier.

For nearly a week, international journalists in Uzbekistan had been observing a quiet effort to shape the country's image abroad.

From Aug. 24 to 29, Tashkent and Samarkand hosted the international media forum “Islamic Civilization: A New Perspective — New Discoveries.” The gathering brought together roughly 300 journalists, media executives, scholars and experts from around 50 countries.

In the morning, reporters could be found discussing ninth-century manuscripts, the legacy of Islamic scholars and the future of documentary filmmaking. By night, they were watching an enormous multimedia production in a newly developed district of the capital.

Together, the two events offered a glimpse into how Uzbekistan wants to tell its story to the outside world — as a country deeply rooted in Central Asian and Islamic civilization, but increasingly eager to project itself as a modern, technologically ambitious and internationally connected state.

From manuscripts to artificial intelligence

The media forum opened at the Center of Islamic Civilization in Tashkent, a flagship institution established at the initiative of Mirziyoyev. Its subject matter was deliberately broader than traditional cultural reporting.

Sessions addressed documentary filmmaking, historical memory, publishing, digital technologies and international media cooperation. Journalists and broadcasters also discussed how Islamic civilization can be presented to audiences who increasingly consume history through streaming platforms, social media and artificial intelligence.

That question carries particular significance in an era when cultural narratives can travel globally within seconds but can also be reduced to stereotypes or simplified social-media fragments.

Uzbekistan's approach is to put its historical sites and scholars in direct contact with international journalists.

The forum took participants from Tashkent to Samarkand, one of Central Asia's great historic cities. They visited sites associated with the region's religious, scientific and architectural heritage, including the Imam Bukhari Memorial Complex.

Imam al-Bukhari, the ninth-century scholar born in the region, compiled Sahih al-Bukhari, one of the most authoritative collections of "hadith" — records of the Prophet Muhammad — in Sunni Islam. His legacy gives Uzbekistan an unusually prominent place in the history of Islamic scholarship.

For visiting journalists, however, the message extended beyond religion.

Uzbekistan is seeking to position its historical heritage as a resource for education, tourism, cultural diplomacy and international media production.

Conversations relevant to Korea

The forum also created an opportunity for media professionals from Asia to compare different approaches to reaching global audiences.

Korean media was represented at the gathering, adding another dimension to the increasingly broad relationship between Korea and Uzbekistan.

The two countries have developed extensive economic and educational ties, with Korean companies, universities and cultural institutions increasingly visible in Uzbekistan.

The media relationship is a less discussed but potentially important part of that connection.

Korea's experience in transforming local cultural content into globally recognizable entertainment — from television dramas and film to music and digital platforms — offers an instructive reference point for a country such as Uzbekistan, which is attempting to make its own historical and cultural narratives more internationally accessible.

The Tashkent forum's emphasis on digital storytelling, documentary production and new technologies therefore went beyond a discussion about Uzbekistan alone.

It was also a conversation about how countries with distinctive cultural identities can communicate in a global media environment increasingly dominated by digital platforms.

Samarkand brings story to life

The forum's excursion to Samarkand was perhaps its most effective form of journalism.

Rather than presenting the country's history through speeches and brochures, organizers brought international reporters directly to the monuments.

The city's public square, Bibi-Khanum Mosque, Gur-e-Amir and Ulugh Beg Observatory form a physical record of the scientific, artistic and political achievements of medieval Central Asia.

For an international reporter, the scale of the story becomes easier to understand when standing beneath the monumental architecture rather than reading about it in a conference room.

The same principle was evident at the Imam Bukhari complex.

The site combines religious architecture with research and educational facilities, reflecting the government's effort to make Uzbekistan a center for the study of Islamic scholarship as well as a destination for visitors.

The emphasis on scholarship was echoed throughout the media forum. Organizers were not simply asking journalists to report on Uzbekistan's past but also encouraging them to consider how that past could be interpreted for a new generation.

From history to new city

The transition from Samarkand's historic monuments to New Tashkent could hardly have been more dramatic.

New Tashkent is being developed as a future center of education, science and culture alongside the existing capital. The project symbolizes the government's broader effort to reshape the country's economic and urban landscape.

On Aug. 28, Mirziyoyev visited the Independence Monument before attending the main anniversary ceremony.

At the celebration, the president presented independence not simply as a historical event but as the foundation for a longer-term national transformation. He announced seven national development programs and outlined goals involving economic growth, investment, education and other areas for the coming decade.

The message was reinforced by the setting. New Tashkent is not an ancient city being preserved for tourists. It is a city being built to represent what Uzbekistan wants its future to look like.

The independence ceremony made that symbolism unmistakable. Traditional Uzbek performances shared the stage with internationally known singers. Cutting-edge visual technology accompanied historical themes. Drones traced patterns across the night sky. The past and future were being presented simultaneously.

A country telling its own story

By the end of the media forum, organizers had also moved toward practical cooperation.

The event included discussions on international media partnerships, joint content production, professional exchanges and continuing cooperation between Uzbek institutions and foreign media organizations that may ultimately prove more significant than the spectacle itself.

Uzbekistan is one of Central Asia's most populous countries and sits at the heart of a region increasingly important to trade, transport, energy and geopolitical competition. As its international profile grows, so does the importance of how the country is represented abroad.

The Tashkent media forum was, in that sense, an exercise in narrative diplomacy.

Its central argument was simple: Uzbekistan's story cannot be reduced to its Soviet past, its contemporary reforms or its strategic location between major powers. It is also the story of scholars, scientists, architects and thinkers whose influence reached far beyond Central Asia centuries ago. The challenge now is to make that story relevant to a global audience.

As Carreras, Brightman and Safina performed alongside Uzbek artists and drones illuminated the sky, the message was no longer being delivered through manuscripts or conference presentations.

It was being delivered through a language familiar everywhere: music, technology, spectacle and a country's determination to define its own future.

For the journalists gathered in Uzbekistan, it was an unusually vivid final assignment. They had arrived to examine how a civilization of the past could be rediscovered and they left watching a country attempt to turn that past into a narrative for the future.