Important examples of Kyrgyz cultural heritage like the Manas epic may not survive into the future. For this reason, recording this sort of heritage with modern technological tools is a valuable undertaking. But the fact that the 25-hour video version of the Manas epic that was recently released by CRC Aigine is not being sold or otherwise distributed widely to the public is unfortunate.
Related to this sort of situation, American founding father Thomas Jefferson had the following to say:
“Time and accident are committing daily havoc on the originals [of valuable historic and state documents] deposited in our public offices. The late war has done the work of centuries in this business. The last cannot be recovered, but let us save what remains; not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.”
What’s the point of not making the results of such an important project like this available to everyone? What do they have in mind just distributing it to primary schools and institutes of higher education? To teach the epic or for researching it? If it’s being distributed to schools for teaching purposes, then teachers can’t teach the entire 25 hours. If Aigine wants to provide schools with support for teaching the Manas epic through video, then they should take clips from this compilation and and put together a 1-2 hour documentary. This would be much more useful to teachers. And now if we turn to institutes of higher education, these institutes won’t be letting students take home the video, and it’s also doubtful that they’ll even be allowed to use it. So I’d make the following suggestions to Aigine: make the 25-hour video available to people by selling it and likewise put its entirety on the internet. Only then can people watch all of it as they want and research the epic freely.
(And also I have this question: which primary schools and institutes of higher education is the video being distributed to? If it’s being distributed to schools of lower means, that would be great, but the above problems remain.)
Since not any person can get a copy of the video and watch it out of personal interest or for research, the compilation doesn’t really have a purpose. Since this compilation is only hidden away in a few primary schools and institutes of higher education in Kyrgyzstan, only a limited number of people can use it. This is an extremely disappointing and upsetting situation.