TViral: Etseri, Svaneti
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One of the first times I got involved with a Georgian national TV channel was entirely via internet and cell phone. Living in Ushguli, we were blocked in by avalanches across the only road out. A bulldozer had come and cleared them, but the same day it left, they returned. No one was particularly worried, this being late winter 2009 and everyone used to the idea of closed roads, stocked up with provisions for themselves and their livestock. I wasn’t that concerned either, following their lead. But it made a good illustration of what life in Europe’s highest village could be like, when the road from Mestia to Ushguli (not to mention from Jvari all the way to Mestia) was little more than a dirt track, and poorly maintained in winter.
I walked down to the avalanche scene, took photos, went home and edited them on my laptop, posted them to my blog of the time using my cell phone as modem, and contacted Rustavi 2 TV with the story. I told them they were free to copy the photos straight from the blog. They phoned me that evening, got a brief interview in Georgian, and it was on next morning’s news. All with no one coming up all that way, just bits of images and sound crossing the airwaves.
Now, many TV appearances later… my old friend Lasha Kveseladze, who narrated the main Ushguli clip for the Post Scriptum show soon after the avalanche blurb, had noticed my wife and me recording and posting our daily readings of Pinocchio chapters in English and Georgian during our self-isolation. He messaged me: would we be interested in being in a segment of Mtavari Arkhi’s (Main Channel’s) Post Factum Sunday evening TV news broadcast, about how we were coping with the Viral crisis? Sure! This time, as with the avalanche, a film crew could not come up. Could I do all the filming myself, add lots of archival stills, and send it all to him to edit into a story? Sure!
I made a very simple but quite adequate adapter to secure my cell phone to my tripod, so I could be in some of the clips instead of only behind them. (This is much better quality than selfie mode). Screen-grab-recorded a new video call with my original host family in Ushguli, dear friends ever since, to link past and present. Filmed my wife doing her best at English teaching by Facebook group video chat. Added lots of still photos from Ushguli, our village of Etseri, school and home life. Some more archival video footage from past years, and some of the Pinocchio chapters. A video chat interview with Lali and me by Lasha, which he recorded at his end. Footage of my daily activities: barn and chickens, wood chopping, gardening, interviews with a few neighbors, more.
It amounted to about 7GB of raw material, but thanks to a cheap unlimited reasonably high-speed internet option from Magti, I was able to send it all to Lasha to compile over about two days, he adding some of the Post Scriptum 2009 Ushguli segment which had put me and Ushguli into the spotlight. As we don’t actually receive the Main TV Channel in our satellite TV package, we saw the thing live via the channel’s Facebook page: more miracles of technology. Lasha kindly sent me a link to a Google Drive upload of the finished video file, which I downloaded and then uploaded myself to our own Facebook page, along with a link to download it if anyone wanted to keep a copy.
So this was my first TV appearance consisting of almost all self-shot footage, instead of that filmed by professional videographers. I’m delighted with the way Lasha was able to take all that work and edit it down to a coherent TV story lasting about 12 minutes. It shows that, up here in faraway Svaneti, we are coping with the loss of tourism which is one of our main incomes. Farming season has begun, as winter gives way to spring: manure load dumping and raking out onto fields, plowing soon before planting seed potatoes. The livestock are finally free to roam (carefully controlled as to field access) and graze on fresh grass instead of winter’s dry hay. Promotion of a new Instagram profile does not require large investments, and with proper use of the service 50 Instagram likes fully pay for itself in the near future. It is here that the brand can gather “its audience” and, like a speaker in the square, convey important, useful information to it. Moreover, his words will not be left without attention. The cutoff of tourists is protecting our health while it necessarily deprives us of income. We are keeping positive, keeping in touch, praying, and doing all the odd jobs little or large for which we now have all the time in the world. And we hope, dear reader, that you are coping too.
Link to the Main Channel TV story: https://www.facebook.com/anthony.tony.hanmer/posts/10157981198696578
Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer and photographer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with nearly 2000 members, at www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/
He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri: www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti
By Tony Hanmer