The cinema of Turkmenistan dates back to the 1920s, when the country was within the Soviet Union. Since independence in 1991, Turkmenistan has had the most limited film production industry of any Central Asian state. History Early years - 1920s and 30s The first documentary to be produced in Turkmenistan itself was Provozglashenie Turkmenskoi SSR (Proclamation of the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic) in 1925, by Sergei Lebedev and Boris Bashem, two Russian cameramen from the Sevzapkino film studio in Leningrad. On 7 February 1926, The Council of People’s Commissars of the Turkmen SSR issued a decree to establish a "film-factory". The Ashgabat Kinofabrica was accordingly founded in Turkmenistan's capital city the following year, and their output consisted exclusively of documentaries, propaganda films and newsreels. Their exhibitions were often accompanied by educational lectures on the themes and Swetlana Slapke, former cultural historian at the Humboldt University deems the productions to have been uniformly characterized by "propaganda and ideological tendentiousness". The first feature-length documentary to be produced from Kinofabrica was Alexander Vladychuk's Beloe Zeloto (White Gold) in 1929, which focused on collectivization in the cotton industry. The same year, Yevgeni Ivanov-Barkov made a successful film Judas, but left the industry soon. In 1930, the first feature film Zemlya Zhazhdet (The Earth is Thirsty) was produced by Yuli Raizman; it was about five Komsomol enthusiasts fertilizing the desert scapes amidst all adversities and bringing in a communist transformation. This film was made for Vostokkino and was originally silent, but had a soundtrack added a few months later for public consumption. In the 1930s, numerous local director and cameramen - Vladimir Lavrov, Djavanshir Mamedov, Nikolai Mikhailovich Kopysov, Djuma Nepesov and Shadurdy Annaev - joined the studio. The first feature-length sound-film was Alexander Ledashchev's I'll Be Back (1935), which was based on Oraz Tachnazarov’s epic theater-drama Batrak about the trials of a young laborer. Its release was accompanied by festive screenings, involving a military brass band. Slapke notes that the film left a strong impression upon the audience for "it was the first feature film in their lives and about their lives". 1940s In 1939, the Kinofabrica was reorganized as Turkmenfilm Studio. The first film shot at the new studio was Dursun (1940), directed by Yevgeni Ivanov-Barkov, who returned after about a decade and would go on to become a keystone figure in the initial development of Turkmen national cinema. The film had a complex-layered