Rome's Casa del Cinema to host look at Georgian film retrospective

Over three days starting this Sunday, the Casa del Cinema theatre in Rome will host screenings of select films by Georgian directors, from pioneering Kote Mikaberidze to contemporary creative Levan Koguashvili.

At the venue, the retrospective Festival of the Georgian Cinema will introduce viewers to a look at the path of filmmaking in the country, traced from the 1920s to today's films, including co-productions, screened at international festivals.

On Sunday, the Georgian film programme will open with Eldar Shengelaia's acclaimed Soviet-era satire Blue Mountains, or an Unbelievable Story.

The 1984-released feature, based on a story by author Rezo Cheishvili, follows a young author looking to have his work published while having to deal with wasteful bureaucracy.

Both the book and the film were widely interpreted as a satire on the Soviet authority, with the latter being selected for the 1985 Directors’ Fortnight, a cinema event running in parallel to the Cannes Film Festival, and claimed the Association of Polish Filmmakers Critics Award.

A look at contemporary film scene of Georgia will follow on June 17 with a screening of Blind Dates, a 2013 work by Levan Koguashvili honoured with the principal prize of the 2014 Zagreb Film Festival.

The work follows a Georgian man, in his forties, and his friend in fruitless search of romance as they meet and date women.

Juries of the Zagreb festival praised it for "simplicity, originality, reliance on excellent scriptwriting, moving performance by the actors and humanity of all the characters."

The 1929-directed 'My Grandmother' by Kote Mikaberidze is considered one of the pioneering works of Georgian cinema. Image: D.R.

The contemporary showcase will also present Tangerines, a Golden Globes and Academy Awards nominee work with a dozen prizes from international festivals and competitions from director Zaza Urushadze.

Set in Georgia's north-western province of Abkhazia during an early 1990s civil war, the screenplay for the work sees combatants from the opposing sides having to find common ground as they seek shelter under the roof of Estonian hosts living in the region.

The final day of screenings in Rome will introduce two more films by Soviet-era Georgian directors, The Wishing Tree by Tengiz Abuladze and My Grandmother, a 1929 release by Kote Mikaberidze banned by Soviet cultural authorities for nearly four decades.

The Georgian film retrospective will precede a similar programme for Azerbaijani film scene at the Casa del Cinema, located in central Rome.