The Global Lens film series at Bates College continues with Song from the Southern Seas, by Kazakhstani director Marat Sarulu, in 8 p.m. showings on Friday, Nov. 6, and Sunday, Nov. 8, in Room 105, Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St.

Hosted by the Bates College Museum of Art, the series continues throughout the fall. Admission is $5. Song from the Southern Seas (80 min.) is in Russian with English subtitles. For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or this olinarts@bates.edu.

The annual series is produced by the Global Film Initiative to promote cross-cultural understanding by showing American audiences little-known, skillfully made independent films. The initiative believes that “a powerful, authentic narrative can foster trust and respect between disparate cultures and mitigate the social and psychological impact of cultural prejudice.”

Released in 2008, Song from the Southern Seas takes on issues of race and ethnicity in one of the most remote areas on Earth. Set in the Great Steppe of Central Asia, the film depicts two couples, one Russian and one Kazakh, living side-by-side in relative harmony, until the fair-skinned Russians’ baby appears to have much darker skin, leading to a story that is at times brilliantly witty or darkly somber.

Song from the Southern Seas is Sarulu’s third feature film. Born in the former Soviet Union in present-day Kyrgyzstan, he studied philology at Kyrgyz National University in Bishkek, graduating in 1980, and also studied at the Moscow Cinema Academy.

Learn more about the Global Lens series.

The film’s location makes it exotic, says Abikeyeva, “but at the same time it will be the journey of your own childhood. That is why the film will be very close to your own heart.”

The production is the first post-Soviet feature film produced in Kyrgyzstan, one of the smallest nations in Central Asia, and bordered by China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The size of Minnesota and dominated by towering mountains, some as tall as 24,000 feet, the country has a population of 4.5 million people, most of whom are Sunni Muslims.

The author of two books, The New Kazakh Cinema (1998) and Central Asian Cinema: 1990-2001 (2001), Abikeyeva has published more than 100 newspaper and magazine articles about film. She received a doctorate from the All-Union Institute of Cinema in Moscow where she wrote a dissertation on The Interaction of Cultures of the East and the West in Modern Cinema Process.

Abikeyeva has directed arts and culture programs in Kazakhstan for The Soros Foundation since 1997. Between 1992 and 1994, she was editor-in-chief of the critically acclaimed film magazine Asia-kino. Since 1995, she has taught film at the Kazakh Academy of Arts.

During her Fulbright visit, Abikeyeva is based at Bowdoin College. The Bates event is co-sponsored by the German, Russian and East Asian languages departments and the Office of the Dean of Faculty.