Altzaney
Nino Orjonikidze, Vano Arsenishvili
Face, wrinkles, hands, gestures: the intimate portrait of a wise old woman.
D
Film Archive
- All
Altzaney
Credits
Nino Orjonikidze, Salome Jashi
Nino Orjonikidze, Vano Arsenishvili
Vano Arsenishvili
Vano Arsenishvili, Nino Orjonikidze
The Pankisi Gorge is situated in north east Georgia, nestled between the Caucasian mountains. It’s been the home of the Muslim Kists for ages, and that of Altzaney, too, for the past 80 years. The old woman has a special position in this patriarchal society: as the mediator between the worlds of the dead and the living, as a wise adviser in existential decisions. Nino Orjonikidze and Vano Arsenishvili bring their camera very close to Altzaney, filming her face and its wrinkles, her hands and their gestures, with sidelong glances to the white laundry flapping in the wind. These images come together to form the intimate portrait of an exceptional woman.
Zaza Rusadze
Zaza Rusadze
Biblioteka – Von Büchern, einsamen Frauen und einem Leser
Ana Tsimintia
They gossip, scream, hammer away on a piano, eat, drink, and bang doors. And there are more librarians than readers in this small Georgian library.
Biblioteka – Von Büchern, einsamen Frauen und einem Leser
Credits
Mikheil Svanidze, Bernardas Andriushis, Ana Tsimintia
Ana Tsimintia
Nika Pasuri
Ana Tsimintia
Ana Tsimintia, Bernardas Andriushis
Ana Tsimintia
Sigitas Motoras
Dr. Claudia Schreiner
There must be more fulfilling jobs than being a librarian in the municipal library of Zugdidi in Georgia. Actually, from what “Biblioteka” shows one would not even assume that these women are working and that their workplace is a library. The number of employees seems to exceed the number of visitors by far. They chat, gossip and scream, someone is hammering away on a piano, people are eating and drinking in the reading rooms, doors are banged – high drama in an institute that ought to be filled with silence and concentration. All these unusual and agitated goings-on cover up the real state of the library. But the short breaks in the racket or the views of the frequently decrepit rooms with their crumbling plaster and bare concrete floors reveal that this place is an anachronism, a remnant of another system, another age. Its only remaining function may be as a meeting point for the librarians, who wouldn’t be more than remnants themselves without this place.
City of the Sun
Rati Oneli
Legends from a ghost town, in conflict with the documentary concept.
City of the Sun
Documentary Film
Georgia,
Netherlands,
Qatar,
USA
2017
100 minutes
subtitles:
English
Chiatura once set the pulse of the times. With the biggest manganese mine in the world, the city was a motor of the Soviet heavy industry. When Rati Oneli arrives, those days are over. Few things are moving, except for his camera which moves to capture a wide screen shot. Or perhaps there are: the minds and bodies of a music teacher, a miner and two young female athletes who persevere in what has become a ghost town. Oneli combines their portraits in a thrilling atmospheric tale that invokes the Georgian national epic and is enriched by suggestive music, giving a narrative form to his long film debut that at least gets the documentary elements flowing.
Zaza Rusadze
Zaza Rusadze
Creeping Borders
Tako Robakidze
In 2011 Russia has started the so-called " borderization" - the installation of artificial barriers such as barbed wire, signs or fences along the occupation line.
Creeping Borders
In 2011 Russia has started the so-called " borderization" - the installation of artificial barriers such as barbed wire, signs or fences along the occupation line. With this creeping shift of borders, the local population is deprived of their land, crops and homes, and a new wave of internally displaced people is sweeping the country. Moreover, the arrest of local residents for "illegal border crossing" by the Russian FSB has almost become a habit: More than 1000 people have been arrested since the beginning of the observed "border crossing".
Exodus
Vakhtang Jajanidze
Two sisters in a dying city. A farewell film.
Exodus
Documentary Film
Georgia
2015
15 minutes
subtitles:
_without dialogue / subtitles
Where is the boundary between documentary observation and staged re-enactment? It may be running right through Chiatura, the former global capital of manganese mining, now sinking into dreariness, perhaps kept together only by the last surviving cable cars. Vakhtang Jajanidze turned places into locations and inhabitants into actors lining up to tell their own stories, which follow a script based on the proverbial “true story”. So the time came when fate wanted to separate two sisters. Lily, a cable car driver, was determined to stay; Tatiana, who was unemployed, had decided to leave …
Zaza Rusadze
Zaza Rusadze
Horizon
Dato Kiknavelidze
Pictures of a modern war, as red as blood and as blue as freedom.
Horizon
Animated Film
Georgia
2017
5 minutes
subtitles:
_without dialogue / subtitles
Everything becomes blood red, the desert is glowing, the man’s face is burning with effort. He is chained to a stone, determinedly pulling the heavy burden along – until he faints. His subconscious sends even redder images, of a modern war with explosions, rolling tanks and rattling machine guns. Dato Kiknavelidze’s animated short film is in chains, like its protagonist: associative links in symbolic colours from whose end, deliberately or inevitably, dangles the Caucasian War of 2008, weighted with the kind of patriotism that has shaped the national narrative as well as Georgia’s toasts for centuries.
Zaza Rusadze
Zaza Rusadze
Li.Le
Natia Nikolashvili
A girl in an orange robe and a stag in a freezing magic forest.
Li.Le
Animated Film
Georgia
2017
10 minutes
subtitles:
_without dialogue / subtitles
A girl in an orange robe and a stag are walking through a freezing magic forest. All around them nature is hibernating. The rivers are frozen, the plants have wilted. But where does their path through the icy cold lead? The girl Li.Le begins to look for signs. She discovers clues, wants to interpret, perhaps even follow them. But at first the stag doesn’t like this … In Natia Nikolashvili’s animated fairy tale world hiking is one thing, finding out another. Is Li.Le experiencing a budding spring and a meeting of souls in the mind? Or do these images contain clues leading to reality?
Zaza Rusadze
Zaza Rusadze
Listen to the Silence
Mariam Chachia
Little Luka lives in the silence of his body, but with the temperament of a hurricane. And he dances – the revue of the deaf in an enchanting fairytale.
Listen to the Silence
This enchanting film about a school for deaf children somewhere in Georgia begins like a fairytale. And that’s how it should be. Sometimes we just need encouraging stories. Like Luka the dreamer’s, who has the temperament of a hurricane confined in the silence of his own body. A boy like Luka would probably be diagnosed as hyper-active and prescribed Ritalin here. In the Georgian back of beyond, however, the teachers say: “He misses his parents.” Or: “Boys will be boys, they have to fight sometimes.”
Georgian filmmaker Mariam Chachia chose a stunningly simple form for her tale of this unlikely place: a girl in a classroom paints pictures to illustrate texts written on the blackboard which describe how Luka feels. Between the chapters we see the school, the children, quarrels, Luka happy and unhappy, a little love story. And the silence. Suddenly all sounds fade out and we hear – a woolly nothing. The world of the children. Luka’s world. Then the sounds return to the screen and we see the dance of those who can’t hear music. Like a revue of the deaf.
Matthias Heeder
Golden Dove Next Masters Competition 2016;
Nominated for MDR Film Prize 2016
Georgian filmmaker Mariam Chachia chose a stunningly simple form for her tale of this unlikely place: a girl in a classroom paints pictures to illustrate texts written on the blackboard which describe how Luka feels. Between the chapters we see the school, the children, quarrels, Luka happy and unhappy, a little love story. And the silence. Suddenly all sounds fade out and we hear – a woolly nothing. The world of the children. Luka’s world. Then the sounds return to the screen and we see the dance of those who can’t hear music. Like a revue of the deaf.
Matthias Heeder
Golden Dove Next Masters Competition 2016;
Nominated for MDR Film Prize 2016
Madonna
Nino Gogua
Madonna has made it in a man’s job: she’s the only female bus driver in Tbilisi.
Madonna
Credits
Natia Guliashvili
Nino Gogua
Alexander Kvatashidze
Sandro Khutsishvili
Niko Tarielashvili
Nino Gogua takes us on a gender trip. We are being chauffeured by 57-year-old Madona, the only woman driving an urban bus through Tbilisi. Madona has made her way in a “man’s job”, confidently steering her rickety vehicle through the streets and quite frequently to the workshop. In the process, she also drives by the patriarchal assumptions of Georgian society. Nino Gogua follows this strong woman as she explores her feminine side, too. On International Women’s Day, Madona is likely to get no flowers from her colleagues again. That’s why she wants to give herself a present: a new hairdo, for example.
Zaza Rusadze
Zaza Rusadze
Sonnige Nacht
Soso Dumbadze, Lea Hartlaub
Found footage essay about Georgia’s recent history: from independence until today.
Sonnige Nacht
A film about the church, nation, republic and people and their interrelationships in times of change, constructed completely of archive material found on the Internet by Lea Hartlaub and Soso Dumbadze. Their found footage essay is a chronological reconstruction of Georgia’s recent history – from independence to the present day. The arrangement of the sequences reveals the influence of the Orthodox Christian church, which has been growing continuously in the past decade. As its power increases it reserves the right to actively intervene in social processes. Today priests throw stones at LGBT protesters. Today, deeply religious women want to heal homosexuals with nettles.
Zaza Rusadze
Zaza Rusadze
Sovdagari
Tamta Gabrichidze
Driving through rural Georgia in a minibus. About a travelling salesman and the value of potatoes.
Sovdagari
Documentary Film
Georgia
2016
22 minutes
subtitles:
English
Gela has turned his minibus into a shop. He drives across the Georgian countryside, selling colourful second-hand clothing and shiny plastic household appliance straight out of the boot of his not quite so shiny car. If you ask Gela for the price of his goods, he will quote it in potatoes. For potatoes are worth more than money. Tamta Gabrichidze’s quasi road movie won the Best Short Documentary Award at Hot Docs 2017. Perhaps for its impressive backdrop, those Georgian mountains passing by and the landscapes at their feet. Perhaps for its bizarreness, which seems to go some way towards satisfying the Western desire for exotic far-away places.
Zaza Rusadze
Zaza Rusadze
Talking Money
Sebastian Winkels
All over the world people go to banks to borrow or invest money. Sebastian Winkels has filmed them – fidgeting and tense.
Talking Money
Documentary Film
Georgia,
Germany,
Switzerland
2017
81 minutes
subtitles:
English
People who go to their house bank for a personal consultation have either too much or too little money. And speaking of “house banks” – that sounds like a special bond, the “financial doctor you trust”. In any case, this special need for consultation arises from disparities: between dreams and income, investment needs and risk forecasts, personal circumstances and objective constraints. This in turn gives rise to a special culture of conversation, one that follows similar rules in Bolivia, Switzerland or Pakistan – that, at least, is the thesis of Sebastian Winkels’ film. And it doesn’t matter into which financial institution in this world we follow him and what language we hear there: superimposed upon each other, the images and soundtracks of the consultations become a sound that the bank customer as a collective subject knows only too well. Oh, the shame about one’s financial impotence! Ah, the confessions one feels constrained to make. And, oh dear, the helplessness with which one must surrender to the rows of numbers.
The camera takes sides – not on a moral level, but on a dramatic one. It is always placed behind the tables where the skilled rejecters and form explainers are sitting, of whom we rarely see more than a sleeve, though. And it faces up to the looks of passing applicants and consultation-seekers like an experienced anthropologist: incorruptible but touchable.
Sylvia Görke
Nominated for ver.di Prize for Solidarity, Humanity and Fairness, Goethe-Institut Documentary Film Prize, DEFA Sponsoring Prize
The camera takes sides – not on a moral level, but on a dramatic one. It is always placed behind the tables where the skilled rejecters and form explainers are sitting, of whom we rarely see more than a sleeve, though. And it faces up to the looks of passing applicants and consultation-seekers like an experienced anthropologist: incorruptible but touchable.
Sylvia Görke
Nominated for ver.di Prize for Solidarity, Humanity and Fairness, Goethe-Institut Documentary Film Prize, DEFA Sponsoring Prize
The Dazzling Light of Sunset
Salomé Jashi
Following a local journalist: fashion show, funeral, Georgian everyday life.
The Dazzling Light of Sunset
Documentary Film
Georgia,
Germany
2016
74 minutes
subtitles:
English
Credits
Urte Amelie Fink, Salomé Jashi, Gregor Streiber
Salomé Jashi
Salomé Jashi
Derek Howard
David Sikharulidze, Ivane Gvaradze, Giorgi Khancheli
Salomé Jashi is shooting in the provincial town of Tsalenjikha, following the paths of Dariko, a reporter who covers giant owls, fashion shows and funerals for the local television station. The people who cross the local journalist’s – and indirectly the camera’s – path are mortifyingly anxious about their public image, so much so that one would be tempted to smirk if it wasn’t for the deplorable changing conditions. So the ever present comedy remains subdued, but always close to Georgian everyday life. Because the latter constantly seems to produce “errors connected to ugliness” and could thus have been the model for Aristotle’s definition of comedy.
Zaza Rusadze
Zaza Rusadze
The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear
Tinatin Gurchiani
A casting: young people against a dirty wall, talking about wars, dreams and ideas of happiness.
The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear
Documentary Film
Georgia,
Germany
2012
101 minutes
subtitles:
English
It all began with a casting. In 2011, filmmaker Tinatin Gurchiani was looking for young people aged between 15 and 25 who thought their lives were particularly well suited for the cinema. Older people came, and younger ones, too. Everyone was interviewed: about their desires and goals, love and war, positioned against the crumbling plaster of the pale blue wall of a gym. The shot Gurchiani used to present her protagonists is called an “American shot” and is part of the cinematographic folklore of the western movie: a frame which brings out the cowboy’s guns. Or which reveals that the gunslinger doesn’t carry guns at all.
Zaza Rusadze
Zaza Rusadze
The Pocket Man
Ana Chubinidze
When the little man loses his home – a suitcase – he jumps straight into a blind man’s pocket.
The Pocket Man
Animated Film
France,
Georgia,
Switzerland
2016
7 minutes
subtitles:
_without dialogue / subtitles
Credits
Réginald de Guillebon, Corinne Destombes
Ana Chubinidze
Yan Volsy
Nadine Buss
Hervé Guichard
Lorelei Palies, Pierre-Luc Granjon, Antoine Lanciaux, Chaïtane Conversat, Christophe Gautry
Ana Chubinidze
Loïc Burkhardt, Julien Baissat
When the little man loses his home – a suitcase – he jumps straight into a blind man’s pocket and henceforth lives there as his navigator.
Lina Dinkla
Lina Dinkla
The Ruler
Shalva Shengeli
A village in Georgia, a nunnery and a statue of Stalin. Should it make way for the nuns or will it be allowed to remain standing? Murderer, opponent of religion or good old father Stalin? An absurd comedy.
The Ruler
Stalin and the church? In the Georgian village of Tsromi, he is standing about in front of it. It’s true, his aura is flaking, his right hand and his former empire are gone and his eyes only roam over the cows and geese on the dusty village street – but then again, people left him alone for half a century. Until the day a convent claims not only the former house of culture but the church and its yard, and Stalin is to be removed. Emotions are running high: can you expect the nuns to practically share a roof with a man who fought an acrimonious battle against religion? But wasn’t the kolkhoz named after him and wasn’t everything better then? Was he a murderer? Didn’t all the village girls fall in love with him when he visited Tsromi once? Is it time to do penance – or wouldn’t a dance club be better than a convent?
Shalva Shengeli circles a myth in picturesque images and with the absurd humour of Georgian comedies. In the realm of “homo sovieticus”, where “leaders” were glorified as religious figures of light, where pictures of Stalin are put next to icons today and the orthodox Church recently published a Stalin calendar, he asks how people deal with the past when the present doesn’t look too rosy. Father Stalin in the meantime gets a new hand to show his people the way …
Grit Lemke
Shalva Shengeli circles a myth in picturesque images and with the absurd humour of Georgian comedies. In the realm of “homo sovieticus”, where “leaders” were glorified as religious figures of light, where pictures of Stalin are put next to icons today and the orthodox Church recently published a Stalin calendar, he asks how people deal with the past when the present doesn’t look too rosy. Father Stalin in the meantime gets a new hand to show his people the way …
Grit Lemke
