Georgian cinema created artistically valuable productions since its origins and therefore, its achievements never surprise us. Films, which are of special importance for Georgian culture, have become an equal part of the world cinema and have won international recognition more than once.
Lana Gogoberidze’s name has long been among the "founders" of the new Georgian cinema, and her work is connected with various stages of the existence, development, formation, directions, and discoveries of the national cinema. We are used to creative news from her. However, with the new film – "Mother and Daughter or the Night is Never Complete" (2023), she really surprised the public (and not only in Georgia) and made it talk about it again.
Unlike Lana Gogoberidze, nothing was known about the first Georgian woman film director apart from a few dry facts. Nutsa Gogoberidze (maiden name – Nino Khutsishvili). It was only 80-85 years after the filming of her own films – the documentary "Buba" (1930) and the feature film "Uzhmuri" (1933) – that were forbidden and hidden in the dark corners of the archives – that they could be discovered. And it turned out that Nutsa Gogoberidze was not only the first Georgian female film director, but also one of the first to create Georgian cinema.
Contemporaries and next generations were silent about her and her films. She didn't say anything herself. She remained silent until the end of her life, 10 years of which she spent in the "Gulag" as a family member of people’s enemy. And in only a few short stories (they were collected and published under the name "The Train of Happiness" in 2011) she described what happened to her during the exile in Siberia.
It is a fact that in the Soviet Union, it was forbidden not only to make films about such stories, such people, life and tragedy but also to mention the repressed and the repressions, that is why so many things, even to this day, remain unsaid, covered and kept secret.
Nutsa Gogoberidze is Lana Gogoberidze's mother. And, first of all, it might have been her daughter who "should have remembered" Nutsa Gogoberidze’s adventure, to bring back her name and memory, revive her and honor her on behalf of everyone.
The conscious or forced silence of the society, contemporaries and next generations lastingly erased, actually wiped away the name of people and, among them, Nutsa Gogoberidze’s name. And because it so happened that the personal and professional story of the first Georgian female film director is one of the most difficult and, perhaps, it is a part of the most tragic period, it can be imagined as a direct expression and unification of the country's history.
Everything in this film (however personal it may be) comes together in such a way, moves to such a dimension and is placed in such a large-scale context. With the versatility and multi-layered nature of the directorial decision, it includes many "internal" stories and, at the same time, it is about many people, many mothers and children (and not only).
Lana Gogoberidze's film is distinguished not only by its artistic quality, but also by a new stylistic thinking and a new cinematic form, which cannot be put into any genre or specific category, cannot be defined directly and traditionally. And we can only evaluate and describe. It is documentary, fiction as well as something else.
Lana Gogoberidze scattered throughout her works sections of the history of Nutsa Gogoberidze and Soviet Georgia – images of Sovietization, repression, post-Stalin era and peaceful life. With different episodes or different points of view, from different points of view and perspective – at different times, she made it into different films. In some places secretly, with a hint, with a light color, in some places directly and openly. "Mother-child" structure is assembled on the fragments of these films (in which other news, other people, other problems, other topics are brought forward – "Noblewoman Maya," "Several Interviews on Personal Matters," "Day is Longer Night," "Waltz on Pechora," "Golden Thread").
The second layer and line on which the structure of the film is built are fragments from Nutsa Gogoberidze's films – "Buba" and "Uzhmuri," which are a clear and vivid sub-textual expression of the country's history, regime, censorship, ideology and, at the same time, make a clear picture of the director's creative handwriting and artistic thinking and an impressive picture.
Lana Gogoberidze's memories of her distant childhood, something real and something illusory, pass through these two parallel and intersecting layers as a strong flow and the main, "penetrating action." Based on the situation, "what and how comes to mind," and what the memory, contemporary reaction or further perception and sensations and old photos have preserved, from the archive and not a rich family album.
In the following events, the memories of a more mature age are involved, clear and conscious. After returning. However, it is still un-deciphered to the end, not "realistic" to the end, still remains a mystery. Like some undisclosed pain and like hidden desires, they never come out to be seen and heard by others and never spoken.
Lana Gogoberidze herself is the author and narrator of the film. A close-up monologue, with thoughts and judgments expressed out loud, intersects, cuts and connects life, personal and public and societal news and the author's, personal attitude towards them.
The storyteller never loses her balance, does not violate the "established" limit, does not try to stir up other people's feelings with sentiments. The narration is not a momentary emotion, it is an emotion "revisited" over the years, experienced many times, but it is perceived by the power of the first narration.
The narrator speaks with nostalgia, sadness, although with restrained and hidden feelings, neutrally and with clear lines, reliving memories, peculiar and free turns, reviewing, evaluating and re-evaluating one's own life and that of others.
Rezo Kiknadze's original and arranged music from films "voices" and activates these memories and feelings, with some signs, related to something, stuck in memory and activated from the context and chain of emotions, in a unified system of compositional and montage structures.
The main thing in Lana Gogoberidze's film is mother and daughter’s reunion after suffering, separation, pain, loneliness, trial, estrangement, getting to know each other, the happiness of a new meeting, of finding each other. Nutsa Gogoberidze's return home is a belated joy of injustice, if not defeat, then moral victory over it.
Today, all this that defined Lana and Nutsa Gogoberidze’s life and what is shown in the film are already in the past. The story is also the past of our country, which for 70 years completely changed the vector of Georgian history and crippled its life. It is also a fact that there is always a danger of history repeating itself, and this film not only tells us about the past, informs us and reminds us, but is also a warning about what can happen to a person when society and the state allow evil and violence.
Lana Gogoberidze's "Mother and Daughter or the Night is Never Complete" ends in the present with amateur/family video shots of Nutsa Gogoberidze's descendants, children – artist Keti Alexi-Meshkhishvili and artist and director Nutsa Alexi-Meshkhishvili (who are successful artists and members of the creative team of the same film), surrounded by their children, families, Lana Gogoberidze’s friends and relatives, who gathered on her anniversary and celebrate the joy of life and being with each other on a bright and happy autumn evening.
Lela Ochiauri
