Malik Qayumov

Malik Qayumov (Kayumov) was born in Tashkent. His official date of birth is 22 April 1912, although no birth records were kept at the time and some sources place it in 1911. His father, Abdukayum, died when the boy was very young; his mother, Sabriniso, was literate. He attended a neighbourhood school and entered cinema while still in his teens.

In 1929–1930 he worked as an assistant cameraman at the Sharq Yulduzi film factory (now Uzbekfilm) and acted in the first Uzbek films, among them “An American Woman from Baghdad”. He studied for about two years at the cinematography faculty of VGIK in Moscow, but returned to Tashkent without a diploma.

From 1932 he worked as a cameraman at the Tashkent newsreel studio and, at the same time, as Central Asian correspondent of Soyuzkinokhronika. His film “Tashkent Textile Combine” won a gold medal at the New York World's Fair in 1939, and for “The Mighty Stream”, about the building of the Great Fergana Canal, he received the Order of the Badge of Honour in 1940.

In June 1941 Qayumov filmed the scientific expedition that opened the tombs of Timur, Shahrukh and Ulugbek in Samarkand. When the war began he volunteered for the front: as a military cameraman he filmed fighting on the Kalinin Front and later in Belarus, was wounded twice and was discharged as an invalid in March 1945. In later interviews he said he believed the war was connected with the opening of Timur's tomb.

From 1946 he was a director-cameraman, head of the newsreel unit and artistic director at Uzbekfilm, and in 1961–1976 director and then artistic director of the Uzbek studio of popular-science and documentary films. His films deal with Uzbekistan's cities and crafts (“The City of Four Gates”, “Samarkand Is Always with Me”), the 1966 Tashkent earthquake, and with India, Vietnam, Bengal and Afghanistan. “Paranja” won the Golden Dove at the Leipzig festival in 1979. In 1982 he published a memoir, “My Life Is Cinema”.

He was first secretary of the board of the Union of Cinematographers (from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, with a break in 1986–1988), a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Uzbek SSR of the 9th (1975–1979) and 12th (1990–1994) convocations, a jury member of the Moscow International Film Festival and chairman of the jury of the All-Union Film Festival in 1966 and 1977.

Qayumov was an Honoured Art Worker of the Uzbek SSR, People's Artist of the Uzbek SSR (1965) and People's Artist of the USSR (1967), Hero of Socialist Labour (1990), twice a holder of the Order of Lenin, and winner of the USSR State Prize (1981) and the Hamza State Prize of the Uzbek SSR (1964); in independent Uzbekistan he received the Order “El-yurt hurmati” (1999).

Malik Qayumov died on 29 April 2010 in Moscow, where he was visiting relatives. His body was brought back to Tashkent and buried with Muslim rites at the Sagban cemetery.