Past, new Georgian film showcased at Berlin cinema

If you find yourself in Berlin next month, you can find some of the most acclaimed Georgian films dating from the 1920s to the latest works screened at the capital city’s Arsenal Cinema.

Located on Potsdamer Street, the venue will present 20 films from the collection of the Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art, the second largest repository of Georgian cinema outside Georgia.

The films shot in the Georgian republic already made a striking impression within Soviet film production due to their idiosyncratic style and joy at spinning fanciful yarns.”

They are characterised by their satirical perspicacity, ingeniousness, and frequently surreal humor”, said a preview for the program.

The films, to be screened starting this Sunday, include three 20th century works restored with funding from the German Foreign Office's Cultural Preservation Program.

Filmmaker Merab Kokochashvili’s 1967 work Great Green Valley follows shepherd Sosana, a native of one of Georgia’s remote mountainous provinces.

A native of the land and followers of its traditions, Sosana finds a growing distance between himself and his wife Pirimze, who is attracted to the trends of the modern society.

Another of the restored works, the 1978 feature Some Interviews on Personal Questions, has won Lana Gogoberidze critical acclaim. The director was most recently awarded the Prometheus Prize of the 2015 Tbilisi International Film Festival, which screened the work.

Gogoberidze’s film centres on Sofiko, a journalist interviewing women about their lives and aspirations. The feature has come to be regarded as one of the first feminist films of the Soviet era.

Among the audience of the Tbilisi festival, which honoured the work, were Erika and Ulrich Gregor, founders of Arsenal.

Their collection of Georgian films at Arsenal features around 130 productions, second only to vaults of the Russian state archive Gosfilmofond.

Salome Alexi’s 2014 work ‘Line of Credit’ will narrate about a woman locked into a mortgage loan debt in modern Georgia. Photo: Tbilisi Film Festival.

The third restored film going up for screening during the October program of Arsenal will be On the Border, a 1993 feature that won Dito Tsintsadze the Silver Leopard award at the Locarno Film Festival

Tsintsadze’s camera follows a young physicist in an environment of imminent civil war in his society.

Without making direct reference to either his country or to the regional conflicts of the early 90s, Tsintsadze [...] tells in dark, laconic fashion of a man who would like to remain neutral, but is forced to realize that this is impossible”, said the Arsenal preview for the screening.

The three screenings will see the respective filmmakers join the audience at the Berlin venue.

In the rest of the program, works by Georgia’s first female director Nutsa Gogoberidze — mother of Lana Gogoberidze — will be joined by a film by Salome Alexi, daughter of the Prometheus Prize-winning filmmaker.

A still from the 1930 film ‘Buba’ by Georgia’s first female director Nutsa Gogoberidze, which will be screened at Arsenal. Photo: goEast Festival of Central and Eastern European Film..

The newest production screened at Arsenal will be the 2015 work Winter Song by Otar Iosseliani.

In Winter Song, the Georgian director [...] brings a fleet-footed and anarchic approach to an episodic story of revolution, war, friendship and how everything fits together”, said a summary of the film by the 2017 goEast film festival in Germany.

The program of screenings will be augmented on October 2 with a panel discussion on the history of Georgian cinema.

Erika and Ulrich Gregor will be joined for the talk by director Khatuna Khundadze and curator Susan Oxtoby from the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.

The Georgian cinema program, set to run through October 19, will be held at the Arsenal within the ongoing celebrations of 25 years of diplomatic relations between Georgia.

The year-long celebrations involve cultural events including exhibitions and screenings in the two countries.