Filmmaker Salomé Jashi in Berlin's Arsenal film institute screening programme

Award-winning film director Salomé Jashi will present two works as part of the ongoing programme of Berlin's Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art next month, when the filmmaker introduces her documentary Bakhmaro and Bread Day by director Sergei Dvortsevoy to viewers at the venue.

Featured by the Artists-in-Berlin programme of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the first part of Jashi's appearance at the cinema event will involve a screening of, and discussion about her 2011 documentary, nominated for the Asia Pacific Screen Award.

The filmmaker will be present both for the talk on her film, and for introducing the 1998 documentary by Dvortsevoy, which Jashi credits for "hugely impacting" her expression.

I am honoured to present this film together with Sergey Dvortsevoy's Bread Day (screened on film!), which I first watched on a damaged VHS tape with messed up colors and which hugely impacted my ways of expression," Jashi told her social media followers while announcing the programme.

The director also reminisced about presenting Bakhmaro at the Arsenal venue years ago, calling it her first "big" film, "a long journey, an exploration of not just one building in the town of Chokhatauri, but also of myself as a filmmaker".

In the work, Jashi's lens capture a building in western Georgia's provincial countryside that variably bears signs of decrepit and often stagnant reality in the locality.

Aside from a Chinese-run store, a home for refugees, a small food store, a party office and a singing class, the building also houses a restaurant with brightly coloured walls, where the tables are always set but there are never any guests."

Waiting for customers, a passive hope for change, the burden of debts, lethargy in a static situation; all this reflect the situation of an entire country," a summary from Arsenal said.

Beside the APSA nomination, Bakhmaro received the Best Central and Eastern European Documentary Award at the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival, and an Honorary Mention at the 2011 Leipzig International Festival for Documentary and Animated Film.

Jashi has also received principal awards of the ZagrebDox, Valdivia International Film Festival and Festival International Jean Rouch for her 2016 documentary The Dazzling Light of Sunset.

The two Arsenal screenings will be part of the Berlin cinema venue's August programme, with evening slots of August 6 hosting viewers. The full July and August calendar of the venue can be accessed here.