Georgia 100 Enchants British Capital
Georgia’s movie industry achieved another milestone over the weekend, as it impressed audiences in London with movies created 50% by women. This parity is a rarity in a country where patriarchal dominance is ubiquitous.
The 'Life through Cinema' festival, themed 'Georgia 100' and hosted by the Regent Street Cinema, follows multiple cultural events in London focusing on Georgia. Contrary to the Cannes Film Festival, which runs these days in the South of France, Georgia 100 has clear message to the art world: Women are equally as talented as men when it comes to movie making. Unfortunately, the Cannes festival experiences yet another year of male domination as only three out of 21 movies for the main competition are directed by women. It follows a trend of scandals from which Cannes is trying to break free.
In the meantime, Nana Ekvtimishvili’s opening movie, My Happy Family, received much acclaim from movie lovers and critics. Ekvtimishvili attempts to shed light to Georgian culture and often portrays humanistic situations, capturing them using fine-tuned realism techniques. It deals with the paradoxes of a country dominated by religion, where a patriarch’s statement can easily cause the birth rate to skyrocket.
Elene Naveriani produced another important feature. Her movie, The Gospel of Anasyrma, is a critique of the hostile environment towards LGTBQ+ people in Georgia. Constantly under attack by homophobic thugs, a love story falls into despair as Georgian society doesn’t offer a meaningful solution for the couple to exhibit their love publicly.
“For me and a lot of LGBT people, it felt that this kind of violence was legitimized somehow. The state was silent. A lot of people left Georgia. I’m not there anymore. You feel like your life is absolutely doomed. We have anti-discrimination laws, but they don’t change anything,” Naveriani says of her use of real TV-footage of an LBGTQ+ protest in 2013, which was violently attacked by homophobic and transphobic males.
Georgia has a strong tradition female directors tracing back to the early years of Soviet consolidation. The country is obsessed with movies and all kinds of picture capturing devices, such as photography. Nonetheless, it is great to see that they also receive the platform they deserve.
By Benjamin Music
Photo: My Happy Family
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