Studying chess not as a sport but as an indicator of intellectual resources that exist in itself is one direction, but the quest for people’s personal portraits associated with it as well as the history of our country's transformation into a chess phenomenon is another direction in today's world. Today, we face and perceive a reality from all sides, where the saying "the smash of authorities" is declared a primitive goal in itself. In the country that has turned into a chess phenomenon, where women have held the world championship in professional chess for decades, no one is surprised today how people struggling with misfortune use these names as a target for their own aggression or insults. This is part of the primitive everyday life of modernity - after ...

THE CHARM FULL OF GLORY Read More

Along with the statement on dramatic plot, there is a problem of dramaturgical completeness in the recent period of Georgian cinema, which can be explained by several types of reasons: the absence of the narrative and the artistic vision coincidence; something that deprives a sense of reality to the voice; what hinders the narrative from developing in itself - the suddenly discovered, less organic metaphors between the tasks of the actor and the director. “Memento Mori” (2022) is a short feature film directed by Giorgi Kadagidze and the sad dramatic story of its main characters includes a small dramatic story found on the verge ...

WE REMEMBER Read More

Zurab Iobashvili's short documentary film, "Where the Moon Rises" (2021) is a form of documentary television portrait and reportage, in which the main hero is not only an action figure, but also a narrator. Television film has a great role in the history of Georgian cinema. Even now, offering new material to the audience often occurs according to these traditions, although the film, which should create a portrait, faces many challenges, providing Georgian documentary cinema technically and...

KIND, RESTLESS THOUGHT IN A DOCUMENTARY PORTRAIT Read More

No matter how many conditions of dramatic unexpectedness there are, no matter how many times we try to introduce an incredible twist in the usual, narrative rhythm of cinema, it will still be a reaction every time, depending on the meaning of the content of what happened, and not just a desire to ask the question "What happened?"... However, this question is the very first thing that embodies the reaction of the audience who is surprised and traumatized with unexpectedness. "10:45" (2021) – this is the title of Giorgi ...

A VIEW OF THE UNEXPECTED ENDING Read More

Documentary film directors and their interest are surely attracted to numerous disasters and misfortunes, uninvestigated cases that remained an unrecognized event. Quest for truth requires a completely different documentary style and narrative form and a film about an unknown disaster aims at seeing the result of imagination and reality. TV and movie viewers have become accustomed to the...

FEAR TRANSFORMED INTO A LIVING CHARACTER Read More

The goodness of Georgian documentary cinema and the deep vision of things and everything existing today are probably as much needed for modernity as hope. The hope not for a better future, but the fact that real life is born and grows only in the smallest, sincere seed of a dream. Still under the conditions of Soviet ideology, Georgian documentary cinema covered various, unexpected areas of search and discovery, which determined its diverse topics. This legacy dictates a certain tradition with the works of Merab Kokochashvili, Guram Pataraia, Gela Kandelaki, Gogi...

POISINED WITH ETERNITY Read More

The documentary film made by Tinatin and Khvicha Emiridze, "Respublika" was shot in 2021, when the world was in complete pandemic lockdown and waiting for new cataclysms... However, as always, and not only then, waiting for a disaster is a usual thing, for a usual over-burdened environment. And yet, the main character of "Respublika" is an unusually thoughtful son of ...

THE STORY OF A GOOD MAN'S GOOD NATURE Read More

"Mziuri" (“sunny”), which creates an association of Georgia's Soviet past and, at the same time, a stable existence stemming from this past, is the title of Ketevan Machavariani's documentary film (2020) as well as the name of its main character. There is nothing special about this door-to-door practice, with which the character, Mziuri Gogichaishvili, like her colleagues, struggles every day. It is worth noting that the film won several prizes and the main idea ...

MZIURI FROM GEORGIA Read More

In all the annotations of Giorgi Mrevlishvili's documentary film, "Twelve Lessons" (2019), we come across the statement that "the film tells grandpa Valeri’s story, who lives in Guria and uses various ways to integrate his autistic grandson into society..." etc. Each time we watch the world built by Valery Kotrikadze's love and labor on a documentary screen or in a TV story, we still get the feeling that this world might ...

LESSONS OF PLACIDITY - HOW TO GAZE THE MORNING... Read More