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Best of MDR 2014
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

Documentary Film
Georgia,
Lithuania
2014
54 minutes
Subtitles: 
English

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Producer
Mikheil Svanidze, Bernardas Andriushis, Ana Tsimintia
Director
Ana Tsimintia
Music
Nika Pasuri
Cinematographer
Ana Tsimintia
Editor
Ana Tsimintia, Bernardas Andriushis
Script
Ana Tsimintia
Sound
Sigitas Motoras
Commissioning Editor
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.