CNN Video Reportage Shows Tbilisi's New Cultural Scene

CNN has created a video reportage about Georgia's Capilat city Tbilisi’s new cultural scene.

It’s full of different parts of the culture scene, such as graffiti street art, the Georgian National Ballet, fashion and at the end Georgian cinematography.

The CNN video reportage shows DC.Love, who is one of the first artists in Tbilisi to paint graffiti on walls.


Graffiti seems to have appeared first in Philadelphia in the 1960s, and became popular in the US, when people began writing their names or “tags” on buildings and is still going strong all over the world.


For Georgia it’s a new step, but we have a lot of talented artists here. At first, writers would try to make their tags (or signatures) more stylish than others.


Later they added more colors, special effects, and made their names bigger. Artists create work quickly which is important because they don’t want to get caught by the police or other people.
The artists say it’s a way to express themselves creatively in society.

Working on graffiti is based on skill, not the color of your skin, religion, or anything else. However it seems graffiti in Tbilisi, like in many places around the world, is still illegal.


According to the CNN reportage the Georgian national ballet which was founded by Iliko Sukishvili and Nino Ramishvili 1945 is still amazing and one of the most attractive forms of dance to be found anywhere in the world. They took traditional folk movements and created their own new choreography.


“Georgia is a small country and has various different regions, each with traditional dances and movements. The dances from the mountains are very different dances from say, the black sea area and because of that with all our shows, it’s like telling a small story about our country” – says Nino Sukishvili, Director of Georgian National ballet.


“Georgian people are very proud of the national dance. Each traditional Georgian dance has its own author and the authors are my grandparents,” adds Nino Sukishvili.


CNN presents Simon Makabeli, who is a Georgian fashion designer. He takes some unique things from Georgian culture and turns them into modern fashion. He used biblical text on blouses for instance. Simon went to London to study as did David Koma (Davit Kobaxidze) another Georgian designer because of a lack of design schools here.


David Koma had never lived here and didn’t start in Georgia. If he had lived here, he wouldn’t be so successful, that’s the problem” - says Entrepreneur Sofia Tchkonia.


“Most people don’t know where Georgia is and those who do only know about the politics not about the art and fashion. The next Alexander McQueen could be found in Georgia because we have a huge potential to give to the world this kind of designer, I believe.” adds Sofia Tchkonia.


Georgia has a huge cinematography history and has great, famous friends from all over the world, which is still going on strong today.


CNN tells us about Georgian cinematography and the Georgian Oscar-nominated movie Corn Island (Simindis Kundzuli), which is a 2014 Georgian drama film directed by Giorgi Ovashvili and was awarded the special jury prize at the Tetouan International Mediterranean Film Festival in Morocco.


The film was selected into the shortlist of nine films for the Best Foreign Language film in the 2015 Academy Awards as well.


“Georgian film is a completely unique phenomenon, vivid, philosophically inspiring, very wise, and childlike. There is everything that can make me cry and I ought to say that it is not an easy thing to make me cry.” -Federico Fellini.


Finally enjoy the CNN video reportage and discover Tbilisi’s various cultural scenes and many attractive traditions of the country.

Nino Ioseliani

24 August 2015 19:04