Zurich to host Georgian culture festival with screenings, displays, talks
Author Aka Mochiladze will discuss his recent novel Love and Death in Tbilisi, released in German in 2020. Photo: Nata Sopromadze.
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A diverse programme comprising talks on Georgian literature, panel exchanges around architecture, discussion about art movements in the country, film screenings and a music performance will await visitors at five different venues in Zurich in the first 10 days of October.
In the cultural festival entitled Bridge: Zurich-Tbilisi, organisers will bring popular Georgian author Aka Morchiladze, art critics and historians from the country, as well as a group of Georgian and Europe-based architects to Switzerland's largest city for a series of talks introducing different facets of Georgian culture.
Founded by Elene Chechelashvili, President of the Georgian Culture Platform association based in Zurich, the festival will mark its inaugural edition this year, with aims of forming a "network of cooperation" between professionals of culture scene from the two countries.
Architect and Tbilisi Architecture Biennial founder and director Tinatin Gurgenidze will feature in the festival's discussion at the Zurich Centre for Architecture. Photo via ostraum.com.
Its Day One programme will see architects, photographers, artists, institution representatives, historians and professors from Austria, Georgia, Germany and Switzerland come together for an "interdisciplinary conference" at the Zurich Centre for Architecture. An installation by curator Irina Kurtishvili will be also be seen by visitors at the venue.
With the agenda moving on to the subject of literature two days later, Morchiladze will be present at the Zurich Literature House for a reading of, and discussion around, his recent novel Love and Death in Tbilisi - published in German language last year. The work will be presented in Zurich for the first time, with the moderator Racher Gratzfeld joining the award-winning Georgian author.
Award-winning feature 'Scary Mother' by young filmmaker Ana Urushadze will be screened in the cinema section of the festival:
Art historians Nino Tchogoshvili and Irine Jorjadze will be at Cabaret Voltaire x Kunsthalle Zurich a few days later to talk about Georgian modernism, futurism, Dadaism and contemporary art, along with presenting a book on the subject of futurism and Dada in Tbilisi. The event will also involve a screening of filmmaker Kote Mikaberidze's 1929 My Grandmother, praised as a "delightful example of the Soviet Eccentric Cinema movement" by the British Georgian Society.
In the penultimate section of the festival, the stage will be set for screenings of works by no less than nine Georgian women directors, mostly produced over the last decade.
The selection will include Rusudan Glurjidze's Karlovy Vary Film Festival prize-winning feature House of Others - nominated as Georgia's bid for the 2017 Academy Awards - as well as Wiesbaden goEast Best Director Award winner and Sundance Grand Jury Prize nominee My Happy Family by Nana Ekvtimishvili and Scary Mother by young director Ana Urushadze, awarded the two prizes each at the 2017 Locarno Film Festival and the Asia Pacific Screen Awards.
The inaugural festival - supported by the Georgian National Film Centre, Writers' House of Georgia and the Georgian Embassy in Switzerland - will be closed on October 10 with a concert by Georgian music producer Alexander Kordzaia (Kordz) and a live performance at Kunstraum Walcheturm.
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