Street vendors are those people whose work is as much invisible as it is visible. It is visible since they seem to be an integral detail of the exterior of streets and cities. Invisibility also stems precisely from the faded images of this daily encounter and the possibility of seeing, to which the eye is somewhat accustomed, the physical body will pass by or purchase the daily necessary products, just as it will continue its path, leaving behind the fact of the unchanging and solid existence of the embodied economic problem. Such a synthesis of the visible and invisible, which any believer or credible one would envy, has nothing to do with the “miracle,” on the contrary, it is part of established processes. As a result, the marginalization of people is also carried out in this way. Street vendors’ daily work is a symbol of the social and economic processes of our country, each stage of whose faceless development smears pus and complicates their daily struggle for survival.
Cinema always finds a foothold in such processes. With its ability to reflect and convey, it has always been a connecting link, voicing the class whose heartbeat and pain can no longer be distinguished in the deafening echo of the city and streets. This is most clearly and naturally achieved by a documentary film because cinema is an opportunity to think in spatial blocks. Beyond the plot of a film, the interrelationship of its conveyance and form is also valuable, which allows the problem and its complete construction to be outlined with characteristic vicissitudes. Especially when the plot of the film deals with topics and issues that are very responsible to convey since it is about people and their spirituality, and not imaginary heroes from the category of a feature film, which is molded like a toy doll into the shape of a director or screenwriter.
Ana Mamaiashvili’s student documentary, “Samgori Girls” (2023), tells the story of street vendors and their lives. In 2023, the Navtlughi market was demolished, as a result of which the vendors, the three main characters of this film, had to go outside the market area and continue their activities there. The first shots are static images of the destroyed market, in the characteristic blue of the evening and the arc of ruins, from a long perspective, with a group of people gathered around the abandoned minibuses. The blizzard of the past, which scattered everything around, shifts, and we can already see crowded and overcrowded narrow streets in the next shots, the epicenter of street vendors, where the essence and source of the conflict become clear in the ongoing conversations and public disputes. The non-payment of market rent, the fee charged by the private sector, which exceeds the daily trading amount, has brought these women out onto the streets, beyond the market walls. Faced with a harsh environment and accustomed to unbearable labor, they try to interact with the routine, undignified conditions with humor and positivity, in order to manage and stay, manage and survive, work and live.
Of course, the presence of positivity, courage and self-irony, when this is an inherent quality of a particular person, and difficult circumstances or hardship are not able to hinder the manifestation of these positive qualities, is quite a hopeful phenomenon, although this could have been preserved beyond the film, even on a phone with a camera. I consider the cameraman's moves, the sequence of shots and the dramaturgy of their construction to be a big drawback of the film. The film, built mainly with long and medium shots, does not have the main line that would help us better absorb the environment and space, the portraits of the characters present in it, who, of course, do not appear to us as preachers of positivity alone. They are, first of all, individuals who have experienced the most what oppression and humiliation, social inequality, poor working conditions and persecution under the auspices of the law, threats, etc. The director seems to turn a blind eye to all this. For him, humor and simplicity are primary, a delightful and unpretentious narration of the issue. The manner of filming is the same, as if he is removed from the object of depiction at a set interval (which cannot be completely set) as the camera angle often loses its center of balance, gets confused, and twists, and this is not because such is the experiment and the new word in Georgian documentary filmmaking, but, as a result of indifference and desires cut off from the ground, it is intended as an inorganic and artificial reflection in relation to the issue and problem.
Documentary cinema has always been about the practice of filming and telling ethnographic, social, or even unusual stories and events. It is the best way to gain exotic experience, to understand the experiences and events of others, but this type of “exotic” experience is not the only starting point for documentary filmmaking, nor does it belong solely to educational filmmaking practice. It also implies thinking in an artistic-stylistic form with its own aesthetic criteria and technical expression, which, at the same time, is synchronized with the nature of the film's subject. Ana Mamaiashvili's film is rejected for its lack of style and form. Its main virtue is the qualities of the characters, who, even without reflection and film, would continue to exist independently. Their intervention in everyday life does not attract attention so much as to make you aware of the existence of this problem, but, on the contrary, provokes a habitual and compliant coexistence with it, which in some cases is not at all something to be proud of.
The finale of the film, which began with ruins and ended with a dance party in a restaurant, is also unclear. In this great paradox, the accidentally far-fetched moral that "life is beautiful" is supported by such banal demagoguery that it seems to claim to be the logical principle of human happiness. On the other hand, it is unclear why the director was so tempted with such a meaningless finale.
Nino Muchiashvili
