Tuesday 13:00 – Wardens’ Gardens
“Wardens’ Garden” is a unique film in which former prison officers reminisce about their work in Khony, Georgia in the last decade of the USSR. The film is inspired by studies of historical memory, its transmission and, in particular, the legacy of the Gulag, aspects of the spread of prison culture throughout the body of the former Soviet Union. Khony was the location of five correctional labour colonies based on tea plantation that was just one piece of the vast penal monolith run by the Soviet prison system. The film tells the story of Tsulukidze ITK no.46 through the memory of the people who lived in and worked in the colony in the last decade of the Soviet era.
The screening is organised by ‘GULAGECHOES’ (University of Helsinki): Gulag Echoes in the “multicultural prison”: historical and geographical influences on the identity and politics of ethnic minority prisoners in the communist successor states of Russia and Europe www.blogs.helsinki.fi/gulagechoes/
Thursday 10:45 – A Long Way Back
Directed by Dmitriy Omelchenko
Introduced by Gavin Slade
“You can be free in prison, and in captivity outside it.” This isn’t a film about religion, nor about tests of faith, nor about addiction. It’s a story about the fate of people, who found each other and began to believe in the possibility of salvation not only in the metaphysical realm, but here and now. The film tells the story of parishioners and a pastor of the Pentecostal Church in the town of Tomsk in Siberia. The film’s protagonists had committed crimes of varying seriousness while suffering from drug and alcohol addictions that had resulted in incurable illness. Having lived through long years of incarceration, they are making perhaps their final attempt at salvation and freedom.
Thursday 13:00 – The Saints are watching
The documentary is dedicated to the Ukrainian art project, widely known throughout the world — “Icons on Ammo Boxes” by Oleksandr Klymenko and Sonya Atlantova. Despite all the horrors and destruction of the first months of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the artists continue to create, contrasting the surrounding death with their conceptual innovative icons and volunteer work for the benefit of a military hospital. On their way through the war-torn Bucha, Irpin, Chernihiv, Donbas, they meet doctors, soldiers, volunteers, refugees…
Stories, emotions, pain and hope are intertwined into a portrait of Ukraine fighting for life and freedom.
Thursday 14:45 – A state in a State
A State in a State is an experimental documentary film that traces the construction, disruption, and fragmentation of railroads in the South Caucasus and Caspian regions, observing how these transport infrastructures have come to materialise the fragile political borders that re-emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The film revolves around the scenes of delay and waiting that constitute cargo mobility, countering optimistic narratives about the New Silk Road and examining how the iron foundation of connectivity is used as a weapon of exclusion and geopolitical sabotage.
Tekla Aslanishvili is an artist, filmmaker, and essayist based between Berlin, Tbilisi, and Vienna. Her practice explores the multifaceted regimes of infrastructural governance, examining how ports, railways, and smart city projects function as technologies of citizenship and sovereignty. She is currently an IFK Fellow, a doctoral candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and a Graduate School Fellow at the Berlin University of the Arts. Her work has been screened and exhibited internationally, including at M HKA – Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp; Berlinische Galerie; SculptureCenter, New York; Taipei Biennial 2023; WIELS, Brussels; Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Transmediale 2023, Berlin; LOOP Festival – Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona; Neue Berliner Kunstverein; the 14th Baltic Triennial; Tbilisi Architecture Biennial; Short Film Festival Oberhausen; and Kunsthalle Münster. She was a Digital Earth Fellow (2019), a nominee for the Ars Viva Art Prize (2021), and the recipient of the Han Nefkens Foundation – Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Award (2020).
Evelina Gambino is the Margaret Tyler Research Fellow in Geography at Girton College, University of Cambridge. Her research is concerned with a situated analysis of global logistics. Through ethnographic work around connectivity infrastructures in Georgia and the South Caucasus, Evelina’s research maps the ways in which planetary projects of circulation, such as the Belt and Road Initiative, are translated into local contexts. In dialogue with feminist critiques of capitalism, her analysis highlights the different kinds of work that this translation entails. Evelina’s work has been published within and beyond academia. Since 2017 she has collaborated with artist and director Tekla Aslanishvili on several multimedia projects, including the experimental documentary “A State in A State” (2022). She is co-editor of the volume “Gendering Logistics: Feminist Approaches to the Analysis of Supply Chain Capitalism” and is currently completing a monograph that proposes a feminist, materialist approach to the study of infrastructural failure.
The screening will be followed by Q and A with Evelina Gambino.
Thursday 16:30 – Taming the Garden, A Film by Salomé Jashi
A powerful man, who is also the former prime minister of Georgia, has developed an exquisite hobby. He collects century old trees along Georgia’s coastline. He commissions his men to uproot them and bring them to his private garden. Some of these trees are as tall as 15-floor-buildings. And in order to transplant a tree of such dimensions some other trees are chopped down, electric cables are shifted and new roads are paved through mandarin plantations.
The film moves the concept of uprooting from its metaphorical meaning into an oppressive, tangible and yet surreal reality.
About the author
Salomé Jashi was born in Tbilisi, Georgia in 1981. She first studied journalism and worked as a reporter for several years. In 2005 she was awarded a British Council scholarship to study documentary filmmaking at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Salomé’s The Dazzling Light of Sunset (2016) was awarded the Main Prize at Visions du Réel’s Regard Neuf Competition as well as at ZagrebDox, Jihlava IDFF, Valdivia IDFF, and several other festivals. Her earlier work, Bakhmaro (2011), made in co-production with ma.ja.de. filmproduktion and MDR/Arte, received an Honorary Mention for a Young Documentary Talent at DOK Leipzig, was awarded as the Best Central and Eastern European Documentary at Jihlava IDFF, and was nominated for the Asia Pacific Screen Awards and Silver Eye Awards.
Salomé is the founder of two production companies: Sakdoc Film and Microcosmos, both producing documentaries and fiction of high artistic quality. She was a fellow of Nipkow Scholarship in 2017 and DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program in 2020.
Salomé Jashi’s statement on Taming the Garden:
“There are many things I would like to say with this movie – maybe a few too many, in fact. None of them are straight up in your face. It’s entirely up to the viewers to uncover these layers – they can uncover as much as they want, as much as they see fit, coming from their own perspective and experience. To me, this film is like the experience of hiking in nature. Maybe you hear a howl in the distance for a moment or notice the grass swaying oddly in the gentle breeze, or you feel a sudden gust of cold air on your sweaty neck. At times, these moments evoke visceral feelings, and at other times, they are pure facts. In this way, the film becomes an individual experience.”
Screening with Q and A with author (in hybrid).
