CoMo No. 16: Georgia (August, 2023)

[sally]

[sally]

dream - temo javakhishvili (1994) #CoMoGeorgia

watch here: https://archive.org/details/temo-javakh ... dream-1994

[der kulterer]

cheers! (new CoMo toast)

[Monsieur Arkadin]

Hi! I might be good at this one!

My wife is learning Georgian, and so we've already been trying to work through a bunch of Georgian films for the past few months.
A recent standout for me was The Eccentrics
Which is silly in a way that quite worked for me. Saw some comparisons to Terry Gilliam, but it feels much more earnestly whimsical to me. I feel like it's more like half-way between Shelly Duvall's Fairy Tale Theatre and Zazie Dans Le Metro

[der kulterer]

The Eccentrics

oh, "the eccentrics" is first in my queue of long films (planned for tomorrow)

[sally]

My wife is learning Georgian, and so we've already been trying to work through a bunch of Georgian films for the past few months.

ooooh cooool.....any particular reason?

[der kulterer]

THE ECCENTRICS (Eldar Shengelaya, 1974) #CoMoGeorgia

Things I learned while watching:
- Chimneys make for questionable hiding places
- A prison escape can be surprisingly more casual than you think
- You can be accused of having lost your mustache in Paris!

[karl]

THE ECCENTRICS is great, but AN UNUSUAL EXHIBITION is even better.

[karl]

I transcribed the subs for this from a mighty blurry Youtube copy for KG:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn3M67yuWOE

This channel has a few GA classics w/ the subs.

[sally]

duchess mary - vladimir barsky (1926) #CoMoGeorgia

i do enjoy these classic literature adaptations (this one the first of 3 different parts of lermontov's a hero of our time directed by barsky) since they give the characters a psychological depth missing from the agit-prop...

opens with implication of laser-like view:



and everyone examining everyone:



also like how it introduces pechorin and mary, with similar shots suggesting their similar (inconstant) natures:





here pechorin meets the woman he does like...an old love met in the ancient rock room....but there are obstacles (represented by the pillar) between them:



the winding path of love:



the converging lines of destiny:

[sally]

bela - vladimir barsky (1927) #CoMoGeorgia

part 2 of the lermentov adaptation and this is less psychological depth than flesh, less converging lines of destiny than gushing streams of desire....










#psycho-arborography










still.....shithead moody-boy pechorin/nikolai prozorovsky is growing on me and i am now fully invested for more amoral ennui in the third and final part....

[sally]

their helicopter - salomé jashi (2006) #CoMoGeorgia

watch: https://dafilms.com/film/2275-their-helicopter

This is a gentle and slightly absurdist documentary about the Ardoteli family in the mountains of Georgia who discovered that a Chechen helicopter carrying cheese had crashed by their house.

[sally]

maksim maksimich - vladimir barsky (1927) #CoMoGeorgia

tying up the trilogy, our lothario is back, but ultimately alone....there's a lot of empty spaces in the shots and isolated figures in the frame....

[der kulterer]

But this sobriety only lasted an instant.

[sally]

i felt this film very strongly ^ (we had like 3 days without rain in july)


alaverdoba - giorgi shengelaia (1962) #CoMoGeorgia

highly amusing, deeply ironic, gorgeous film from giorgi "pirosmani" shengelaia, with maestro aleqsandre rekhviashvili as DP, about an ascetic (& hot) soviet "virtue of labor" nonsense-spouting zombie visiting a folk festival, frowning at balloons, and becoming so outraged at everyone enjoying themselves that he gets drunk, steals a horse and has an 'experience' on the roof of a (lovely) church. beautiful georgian fun.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEA0ikHLBjA

[sally]

continuing........




khareba and gogia - giorgi shengelaia (1987) #CoMoGeorgia





not quite, it's stalker with a moustache...




in fact....this film is so much silly shooty shooty bang bang uber-macho nonsense, but the land is stunning and damn those moustaches are sexy

[sally]

saba - mikheil chiaureli (1929) #CoMoGeorgia

absolutely adore dark, gloomy, relentlessly miserable silents. this one is firmly soviet perils of alcohol, but is terribly let down by the ending where the crushed child lives and the father reforms.

[der kulterer]

MARTIAN THROUGH GEORGIA (Chuck Jones, Abe Levitow, Maurice Noble, 1962) #CoMoGeorgia

It is a "one-off" tale about a sad and bored Martian who travels to Earth in search of happiness.
He lands his spaceship in the state of Georgia, hence the title.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8gt1us

[sally]

cheerless - nutsa gogoberidze (1934) #CoMoGeorgia

stunning (and tense!) female-directed visual feast about the mythical deadly passions of the swamp frog-queen vs soviet pioneers

[der kulterer]

cheerless - nutsa gogoberidze (1934) #CoMoGeorgia

also called DESPERATE VALLEY (and its hopeless indifference)

why do all these people despair?
it is because of this...



Once upon a time, a huge toad named Dodo lived in a swamp.
Then many clever people — members of Kolchoz (extensive collective farming) and Komsomol (Stalinjugend) — put their heads together and got a bright idea to drain a landscape of water (to become an avant-garde, contributing to a future climate change).



the ultimate message of this agitprop:
whoever suffers environmental grief, blame not only the greedy capitalists but the megalomaniac Soviets too!


if anyone thinks (based on the above-mentioned), i despise this film (its propagandist plot), the opposite is true.
i was totally mesmerized by Ujmuri, i can watch it frame by frame, it's a masterpiece!



absolutely adore all the mildly displaced (from the center of the shot) heroes and heroines, gazing out of the frame
(making all the voyeurs, sitting in front of the screen, jealous because their voyeuristic gaze can't follow)





endlessly marvel at all the characters whose heads were chopped off by the frame
(commercial dimwit filmmaking never dares to do something alike)



even the ravages of time work for this movie!
there is a scene when the heroine is threatened by being forever separated from her (temporarily absent) lover.
but she puts all her hopes in the newly established phone connection


since then an attentive viewer can observe (in the frames) occasional flashes of the phone signal, connecting the two lovers across the space

the bad news is marked by a bigger black dot


flashing signal can trace all the protagonists


and especially marks the protagonist in need


eventually, it turns into a tear (shed at the thought of the upcoming doom of the lover)



it can also transform into a loud cry for help
(fans of Brakhage (not only them) can only sit in awe in front of Ujmuri)

It was the first Soviet feature film directed by a woman.

[der kulterer]

GARDENS IN AUTUMN (Otar Iosseliani, 2006) #CoMoGeorgia

utterly disgusted, all the male characters (no exceptions) of this movie should be kicked in the ass.

[sally]

lullaby - nana janelidze (1994) #CoMoGeorgia

for a while now, i've been thinking i might like to read this book:

In a rich and engaging book that illuminates the lives and attitudes of peasants in preindustrial Europe, Piero Camporesi makes the unexpected and fascinating claim that these people lived in a state of almost permanent hallucination, drugged by their very hunger or by bread adulterated with hallucinogenic herbs.

and so i watched this (very beautiful) film which i can only conclude is about a community of hardened addicts experiencing a bad episode




there is even a white HORSE (of COURSE, in a vision) in case you were making the mistake of taking the film for some kind of national allegory




anyway, things start off very idyllic (very, very idyllic, much more idyll than any sober human can endure) but then the darkness lurking in the delirious smiles starts seeping out.....a truly insane film.....

[der kulterer]

The fate of two Georgian schoolchildren, Gogi and Kiko, who share a love of painting, a dream to go to art school.

GOGI RATIANI (Kote Marjanishvili, 1927) #CoMoGeorgia

oh, the mischievous youth...

DISCLAIMER: This is NOT a post in the "New thread dedicated to pictures of people sticking their tongues out"

DISCLAIMER: This is NOT a post in the "New thread dedicated to pictures of people sticking their tongues out"

DISCLAIMER: This is NOT a post in the "New thread dedicated to pictures of people sticking their tongues out"

DISCLAIMER: This is NOT a post in the "New thread dedicated to pictures of people sticking their tongues out"

DISCLAIMER: This is NOT a post in the "New thread dedicated to pictures of people sticking their tongues out"

DISCLAIMER: This is NOT a post in the "New thread dedicated to pictures of people sticking their tongues out"

The film's action begins on the eve of the October Revolution.

I must admit I sympathize with the destructive anti-Soviet sentiments of the petty bourgeois couple.
Attending the 1st May parades (as a juvenile citizen of the Soviet satellite) was one of the most embarrassing and humiliating actions I experienced in my youth.
It was so indescribably dumb that even today I feel like throwing up just by recalling it.


On May 1st, 1987, local dissidents (Charter 77 signatories) attended such a parade with the banner saying CHARTER 77 ENCOURAGES CIVIC COURAGE and within half an hour they were arrested — not too much understanding for mischief...

[sally]

that incomprehensible love - merab saralidze (1976) #CoMoGeorgia

[sally]

impressions from rustaveli - nana tchitchoua (2001) #CoMoGeorgia

no idea what was going on, other than it's about a female king. but it's so pretty


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2dMwvSsvZw

[der kulterer]

Loneliness... longing...
There was only one thing left to do:
to intoxicate the mind
with the smoke of opium...

AMOK (Kote Marjanishvili, 1927) #CoMoGeorgia

ok, when i said before...

i was totally mesmerized by Ujmuri, i can watch it frame by frame, it's a masterpiece!

... i guess it’s obvious from the "review" that the experimental nature of the film is partly in the eye of the beholder.

however, Amoki is an experimental masterpiece objectively!

One of the most experimental works of the silent era.

just don't get discouraged by the very beginning.
i admit that (after a few minutes) i checked if i am not watching a "wrong" movie (having high expectations already at the start).
somehow, the Soviets (of 1927) thought using blackface was not detrimental to the critique of colonialism and capitalism.

with Eng subs! ↓↓ (Stefan Zweig adaptation)
https://youtu.be/Y574q9E6DAo?si=8xsS_hHaKyiHDO1Q

[sally]

krazana / the gadfly - kote marjanishvili (1928) #CoMoGeorgia

my fifth marjanishvili! so now i can say he's a really good director. which is more than i can say about this film as whilst it's nice to look at, it's mildy incomprehensible without subtitles (the book it's based on is interesting enough - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gadfly ) but i can see why it appealed to the russians (aside from revolutionary sympathies) given the miserable ending - innocent youth to adult suffering to dead vision....

[sally]

common wall - nodar managadze (1972) #CoMoGeorgia

i never saw a film i so indentified with

[der kulterer]

TEARS WERE FALLING (Georgiy Daneliya, 1983) #CoMoGeorgia

An ordinary man frustrated with the various flaws he sees in society begins to psychotically and violently lash out against them.

the above-mentioned quote is NOT a synopsis of TEARS WERE FALLING (it easily could be!) but of FALLING DOWN (1993, the "remake" of TEARS WERE FALLING made 10 years later) by Joel Schumacher.


hero of the film is a comrade Pavel Ivanovich Vasin, familiarly called Pascha or Hampster (forerunner of D-Fens or Yevgeny Prigozhin)...

A kind, cheerful man suddenly turns into a sullen, angry grumble.
All around begins to annoy him, and he mercilessly destroys his family, job, and entire life.

... a typical apparatchik of the Soviet patriarchal gerontocracy
who goes berserk and makes (by his psychotic steps) an already insane bureaucratic system even more dysfunctional.
(a remarkable achievement!)


i bet...


... "Zenya" Prigozhin tried recently to reenact this very film (with his mad "un-coup")...


but no worries!
this whole world is overlooked by good fairies and thus all ends well!

He leaves home and for the next 24 hours continues to do strange things,

until his granddaughter persuades him to have a good cry,

after which he feels much better.

[sally]

....this guy is insanely hot

omg he's in another movie

giuli - nikoloz shengelaia, lev push (1927) #CoMoGeorgia


yeah yeah....gorgeous scenery, some girl, yadda yadda yadda..........