plot centered around a traditional elite man Nury (played by Alty Karliev) coming to terms with his wife Dursun (played by Nina Alisova) subverting gendered stereotypes, after she joins the Communist Party's Youth League. The film was based on a careful study of Turkmen culture and traditions; Karliev won a Stalin prize and has since considered it to be his best role. Slapke deems the film to be his most impressive work. Apart from Nina, all other actors were of Turkmen descent and had no prior experience in cinema. In 1941, the Kiev Film Studio was evacuated to Ashgabat as a result of the Second World War. Ukrainian directors of repute partnered with the Turkmenfilm to make newsreels and other films; Ivanov-Barkov produced The Procurator (1941) during these spans. Slapke argues that there was a noticeable improvement in the professional - and especially technical - competence of Turkmen film-makers during this span. The first film after the War was Ivanov-Barkov's The Distant Bride (1948), a musical comedy which was met with widespread popular reception across the Soviet Union with Karliev winning another Stalin prize; it remains his most popular film though Slapke and others have since taken a poor view of the work. The Turkmen cinema industry virtually ceased to exist months later, when the Turkmenfilm building was destroyed in the 1948 Ashgabat earthquake; among the casualties were numerous film artists. Nearby studios in Baku and Tashkent (since located in other Central Asian nations) produced very small number of newsreels and documentaries on Turkmen themes during these times. 1950s The Turkmenfilm studio was rebuilt in the 1950s, and it began producing feature films again. The first post-reconstruction films were by Rafail Perelshtein — The Shepherd's Son (1954) and The Cunning of Old Ashir (1955). The 50s saw the rise of Alty Karliev as a director, whom Slapke describes as the indisputable founder of Turkmen national cinema. Coming from a background of popular theater and having made a name for himself as an actor reflecting national spirits, he co-produced the first colour film Extraordinary Mission in 1957 with Ivanov-Barkov about the exploits of a state-agent during the Russian Civil War. Ayna (1960) was his next directorial venture covering the complex travails of a young female communist during the times of collectivization. Slapke notes both of them to be unpersuasive, in nature. He was the artistic director of Turkmenfilm Studio from 1956