Lights, Haze

Filmstill Lights, Haze

Lights, Haze

Lights, Haze
Tata Managadze
International Competition Animated Film 2025
Animated Film
Georgia,
Portugal,
Belgium,
Finland
2024
8 minutes
Georgian,
English
Subtitles: 
English

Only light lifts the outlines of the world from darkness. In cyanotype, light-sensitive material is used to make white drawings materialize on a blue background. Tata Managadze challenges the light-sensitivity of our mind. She uses reflections and mirrors to expose the sensitive, gossamer-thin material of association in ways that make ephemeral memories and emotions visible. The poem at the beginning tells us how soothing and at the same time brutal her protagonist – light – can be. Like children in a playground, we are seduced by and forever searching for the dance of lights. Flower patterns on the dishes in the sink begin to spin when our eyelids grow heavy and sleep is approaching. Everything moves. In the transitory state between waking and dreaming, a different kind of life stirs in the prefabricated building estate: The stars of the restaurant leap from the sign and scratch traces into the wall. Or are these scars that must still heal? Perhaps scars from the Soviet era?
Again and again, well-known fragments are re-assembled. This non-narrative animated documentary takes us on a spiral of remembrance to an untraceable origin, building a bridge to our childhood ability to find magic in the most mundane things.

Irina Rubina

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Tata Managadze
Producer
RE:Anima European Joint Master in Animation
Sound
Jose Salgado, Irakli Margishvili
Sound Design
Jose Salgado, Irakli Margishvili
Score
Jose Salgado
Animation
Tata Managadze
Nominated for: mephisto 97.6 Audience Award