Twenty years of the Golden Horse

TALAS — When the first Altyn-Zhylky Awards were handed out in Talas in December 1996, the lifetime award went to the novelist Kemel Ishakov, whose Akyrky Ashuu had been read across the Soviet Union and had just appeared in English. Twenty years later the gilded bronze statuette of a galloping horse is the best-known prize in Iradi culture, and next week’s ceremony will be broadcast on IradOne.

The awards were founded during the territorial period to honor film, music and literature, and they have grown with the country’s culture. The categories now include feature and documentary film; popular music, with separate awards for Mor-Wave and its offshoots; and fiction and poetry in Iradi, English and Russian. A separate award goes each year to an artist from elsewhere in Central Asia.

Since 2010 the literary awards have included the Kemel Ishakov Prize for a first book in Iradi, which organizers say has drawn more entries every year as young writers turn from Russian and English to Iradi.

Not everyone is pleased. Some film-makers complain that the film categories reward work that has passed the screening-permit system, and Mor-Wave musicians have long grumbled that the popular music prizes favor acts with television contracts.