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Seasons of the Talas Alatau

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Seasons of the Talas Alatau is a nature documentary series made by the documentary unit of IradOne, the state broadcaster of the Irad Special Economic Zone (ISEZ). Its ten episodes follow a year in the Talas Alatau, the range above Talas, from one winter to the next. First broadcast in January 2022, it is repeated on Tuesdays at 09:30.[1]

Format

Each half-hour episode follows one animal or one change of season. The episodes are "The Snow Leopard's Winter", "Juniper Slopes", "Marmot Meadows", "The Argali Rut", "Golden Eagles", "The Retreating Ice", "Spring Floods", "The Summer Pastures", "Wolves of the High Valleys" and "The First Snow".[1] Much of the wildlife footage, including the opening sequences of the snow leopard, came from camera traps left out through the winter. "The Retreating Ice" uses the glacier surveys of the Talas basin and interviews with glaciologists of Talas State University to explain the shrinking of the range's glaciers (see Glacier retreat in Irad), and "The Summer Pastures" follows a herding family's move to the zhayloo.

Production

The series was filmed between the autumn of 2019 and the spring of 2021 by a crew led by the series producer Aibek Jumakadyrov, who had made IradOne's earlier series Besh-Tash in the same mountains. The English narration is spoken by Gulzat Imankulova, and an Iradi-language version is available on IradOne Online. Because the Qara-Chik Demarcation Line runs through the range, the crew worked in the upper valleys of the Autonomous Tribal Regions with permits from clan councils, arranged through the liaison office of the United Nations Mission in Irad, and with clan wardens as guides.[2]

Reception

The series won the documentary prize at the Altyn-Zhylky Awards in December 2022. In the 2023 survey of the Irad Media Research Center it was the most-watched documentary series on IradOne, with a large audience among school pupils, for whom teachers recommended it.[3] Reviewers praised its photography, particularly the argali and eagle sequences.

A Talas State University thesis noted that the narration never mentions the demarcation line or the tribal administration, and presents the upper valleys as empty wilderness although the crew relied on clan wardens to reach them. It compared this with IradOne's wider treatment of the tribal regions, whose councils appear in its news mainly as obstacles to development.[4] IradOne has said that the series is about the mountains and their animals, not politics.[2]

References

  1. ^ IradOne (2022). Seasons of the Talas Alatau: Programme Information. Talas: IradOne Media Group.
  2. ^ IradOne Broadcasting and Media Corporation (2023). Annual Report 2022. Talas.
  3. ^ Irad Media Research Center (2023). Television and Online Audience Survey of the ISEZ. Talas.
  4. ^ Bolotbekova, Aizat (2024). Empty Mountains: Landscape and the Tribal Regions in IradOne Documentaries. MA thesis, Talas State University, Department of Journalism.

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