Scottish premiere
Wheelchair accessible, English intertitles, Pay-what-you-can tickets (£0-£8)
If you want to attend this screening but find it unaffordable, you may be able to have the cost of your ticket, commute, and/or childcare covered by the Audience Access Fund — see here for further details.
Once banned by the Soviet regime in Moscow, this striking feature is the first film directed by a woman in the Caucasus (and, depending on where you stand on constructed continental boundaries, the whole of Western Asia). After co-directing two features with her fellow Georgians — Mati Samepo (1928) with the celebrated Mikhail Kalatozov and Buba (1930) with David Kakabadze — Nutsa Gogoberidze made her independent directorial debut in 1934 with Uzhmuri. Roughly translating from Georgian as “cheerless”, this title refers to the grim and treacherous spirits that, according to local tradition, inhabit the marshlands of Mingrelia, a subtropical region on Georgia’s Black Sea coast. Uzhmuri purports to celebrate the Communist authorities’ drive to drain these swamps. Yet, the film’s experimental style and equivocal storytelling, which documents – if not, celebrates – an indigenous culture rooted in superstition and mysticism, undermines its propaganda message. With a cast consisting predominantly of untrained locals, Gogoberidze creates a magically realist world on screen, refusing the Soviet drive to erase and homogenise. The censors initially missed Uzhmuri’s explosive potential but banned the film shortly after its premiere. Considered lost for over 80 years, Uzhmuri’s reels were rediscovered in Gosfilmfond, the central Russian (formerly, Soviet) film archive in Moscow. In 2016, they were handed over to the Georgian Film Studio and subsequently restored.
Content notes: images of people and animals in distress, depictions of poverty
Access notes: black & white cinematography, no sound, fast editing
Curated by misha irekleh
Trailer
Short: We Are (At) Home (dir. Shakhzoda Mirakova, Kyrgyzstan)
The film presents the untold stories of Luli, the Central Asian Roma people, and shows their resilience and fight for their rightful place in society. Those struggles are demonstrated through a Luli family that serves as a collective representation of Luli communities spread all across regions of Central Asia.
Access notes: colourful and bright images