German Art Festival: When Tbilisi Meets Berlin

On September 18-23 Art Festival ‘Camera Obscura Berlin-Tbilisi’ took place. Guests at the press conference were greeted by, amongst others, Monika Lenhard, Deputy Head of Mission of the German Embassy to Georgia; German photographer and actress Margarita Broich and Jens Peter Maintz, famous cellist. 

“The idea of the festival is to develop new impulses for our future bilateral cooperation,” Lenhard said. “In recent years, Georgia and Tbilisi have been in the spotlight of various European periodicals as a fast-developing country and Tbilisi as a club-life city. Berlin was just like that in the 1990s”.

The festival was held for the first time within the Georgian-German Year with the  support of the German Embassy to Georgia and with the organization of the German company RCCR Project.

The festival was opened by Margarita Broich’s photo-exhibition named ‘When Curtains Drop’ at the Writers’ House. “I read one of Nino Kharatishvili’s novels- she perfectly depicts this country, yet Georgia exceeded my expectations,” the photographer said. “I liked Eliava market very much, as it is a mix of both chaos and order: one that I’ll definitely be photographing,” she added.  

On September 20,  Jens Peter Maintz played in the  Conservatoire alongside the ‘Georgian Sinfonietta’ against a background of paintings by Flavio de  Marco.

On September 21, influential architect Stefan Braunfels gave a lecture and panel discussion about ‘Urban Development’.         

On September 22, Café Gallery hosted ‘Club Night’ with DJs Patlac, resident of one of the first legendary clubs ‘Watergate’, and internationally renowned Stefan Goldmann.

On September 23, electric guitarist Matthias Lindermayr, who has won the Biberach Jazz Prize and Kurt Maas’ Award, and acoustic and electric bass player and composer Manfred Brundl, holder of the SWR Jazz Prize, offered jazz and electric music fusion to an audience at Fabrika. Guests also got to view Georgian and German art and sample German and Georgian dishes under the title ‘When Tbilisi Meets Berlin’.

The festival is to become an annual tradition rotating between Tbilisi and Berlin.

By Maka Lomadze

Photo by Tako Robakidze