Of all the figureheads of post-war Georgian cinema — Tengiz Abuladze, Otar Iosseliani, his own brother Giorgi — Eldar Shengelaia’s is the name most readily and explicitly associated with the struggle for national independence. Abuladze et al are important points of reference for Georgian cultural identity; Shengelaia on the other hand was an active political campaigner. Indeed, after the success of his 1983 satire Blue Mountains, he withdrew from filmmaking for a decade to dedicate himself to a political career as remarkable as his artistic one: he was twice elected to the Supreme Soviet of the Georgian SSR; sat on the Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR; was a member of the so-called “Sobchak commission” that investigated a Soviet military crackdown on pro-independence protesters in Tbilisi; helped to found the People’s Front of Georgia; and was a signatory to the nation’s eventual Act of Independence in 1991.

The relationship between Shengelaia’s political career and his filmmaking practice is a complex and oft-disputed one. The temptation is read the issue of Georgian nationalism back into his films, retroactively placing them in a continuum with the battle he waged in the late 1980s. Indeed, Georgia’s ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili announced at Shengelaia’s eightieth birthday jubilee in 2013 that “we will all fly away, the whole country, in defiance of those who are trying to put us down”: a reference to a famous scene in Shengelaia’s 1975 film The Eccentrics, in which two peasant inventors escape the clutches of the Soviet police in a homemade airplane. This approach to the director’s works is both productive and counterintuitive: it risks eliding Shengelaia’s considerable artistic talents and flattening the ambiguities that make his tragicomic satires so rewarding.

A case in point is his breakthrough feature, 1968’s An Unusual Exhibition, from a script by Rezo Gabriadze, and with typically incisive music from Giya Kancheli, mainstay of mid-century Georgian film. Aguli Eristavi is an aspiring sculptor with grand artistic plans for the large lump of marble that he hoards in his courtyard. While drafted in the Red Army, he is arrested by, and then falls in love with a Russian officer, Glasha. As their post-war domestic life settles into a familiar rhythm, Aguli’s designs on his precious marble are constantly frustrated by an endless succession of neighbours asking him to sculpt gravestones and memorial busts. As his marble mound sits untouched, as though silently judging him for his failures, Aguli must contend with the slow death of his personal ambitions in the face of public pressure and private responsibility — both to his children and to his apprentice, Zaur.

Those looking for hints of anti-Soviet — or anti-Russian — sentiments in Shengelaia’s cutting but empathetic tale might settle on the Aguli-Glasha romance. Our hapless Georgian recruit is detained by his military superior from the north, first literally and then metaphorically through the family life that compels him to accept his unfulfilling commissions. That so much of the film is in Russian as a result of the romance plot is notable in itself. But to insist on this reading flattens out Glasha’s own character in a way that Gabriadze and Shengelaia themselves refrain from doing.

In truth, Unusual Exhibition’s treatment of the figure of the artist is not easily reduced to political grandstanding of any stripe. Shengelaia’s attention to the splits and elisions between Aguli’s inner creative spark and his outer public function might feasibly be read as a commentary on the nature of Soviet state-mandated artistic style; but, as Konstanty Kuzma writes, in truth the film “tells two stories at once. One is that of an artist learning to serve the collective, another that of a collective subduing its individuals. One talks about the merits of Social Realist art, the other illustrates how a nation’s cultural identity falls prey to ideological dogmas. Similarly, the Georgian-Russian love story can both be read as a quest for a common language, and as an encounter that unveils unbridgeable divides… By constructing a story that can be read either way — as being pro-Soviet or anti-Soviet — Shengelaia illustrates that the divide between these two interpretations is in large part normatively motivated. Viewers decide how to interpret the story, not Shengelaia on his own.”

An Unusual Exhibition (1968).mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1h 32mn
Size: 	3.16 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1920x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	4 618 Kbps
BPP: 	0.093
Audio
#1:  	Georgian 2.0ch AAC @ 256 Kbps

https://nitro.download/view/6CBF5724C201DBE/An_Unusual_Exhibition_(1968).mkv

Language(s):Georgian
Subtitles:English (Hardcoded)

The post Eldar Shengelaia – Arachveulebrivi gamopena AKA An Unusual Exhibition (1968) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

There’s a distinct madness to Georgian auteur Eldar Shengalaia’s method when it comes to blending political satire and humour. He deploys madcap comedy with ease to both disguise and expose the nuanced complexities of individual and societal living during the Soviet era. The 1973 surrealistic satire Eccentrics is Shengalaia’s second feature-length comedy, in which he rekindles the thematic pneuma of his earlier diploma films such as Legend of the Frozen Heart and Fairy Tale in Snow (1958-60) by juxtaposing fantasy and reality in a fable-like love story, described variously by critics as “poetic”, “grand and eternal”, “a parable of grotesque realism” and “vaudeville-like.”

Somewhere in rural Georgia, country lad Ertaozi’s (Demno Jgenti) idyllic life comes to a startling halt when his father dies, leaving him orphaned. Auctioning his home and belongings to square up his father’s debts, Ertaozi sets off for the city, where a chance encounter with the winsome Margalita (Ariadna Shengelaia) makes him go weak at the knees. Sensing Ertaozi’s infatuation, Margalita manipulates him to further her own ends, and Ertaozi soon finds himself behind bars, albeit in the lively company of Qristepore (Vasili Chkhaidze), a zealous scientist who dreams of building a flying machine. Impressed with each other’s problem-solving acumen, Qristepore and Ertaozi soon form a mentorprotégé bond and, defying the swivel-eyed cop, Khuta (Boris Tsipuria) and his wily sidekicks, embark on an unexpected flight of fantasy, both literal and allegorical.

“Eccentrics was perceived as a fairy tale, but in fact, it’s an ode to freedom!” exclaims Shengalaia, who, at 90, has retained his crown as the undisputed “King of Tragicomedy”. Disguised as dreamy folklore, Eccentrics utilises classical and pastoral humour to articulate Georgia’s pursuit of national and cultural identity, whilst underscoring the absurdities of the Socialist system through a series of oddball characters who are both perpetrators and victims of its ideological misdemeanours. Although steeped in Georgian traditions, the characters of Eccentrics carry a universal appeal and their idiosyncratic charm in blending pathos with laughter is reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin, one of Shengelaia’s great influences.

“Almost all Georgian cinema is an allegory of that [Soviet] time, because you couldn’t speak directly,” says Shengalaia. Despite its non-controversial plot, Eccentrics’ subtext did not escape the scrutiny of the regime’s gatekeepers, and its on-screen release was deferred for a long time, restricting it to screenings at smaller clubs. Years later, when the film was allowed on the big screen, the subversive significance of Qristepore’s and Ertaozi’s predicament was clearer – Soviet dissidents were often confined to psychiatric institutions. Shengalaia and co-writer Rezo Gabriadze were also denied the permission to take Eccentrics out of the country. “It was unimaginable that you would go beyond the [Soviet] boundaries then. We had the feeling that we were born here, we would be here forever…” Decades later, when western audiences and critics finally had the opportunity to sample his films (including Eccentrics at Cannes and other film festivals), instant comparisons were drawn with the likes of Vittorio de Sica and Luis Buñuel.

A delightful cocktail of love, lust, chicanery, and scientific wizardry, Eccentrics is a triumphant tale of choosing freedom over bondage, dreams over reality, and hope over fear. “Captivity gave us the impulse to create something exciting and interesting. This is a real paradox”, says Shengelaia. Of his titular eccentrics, he adds: “They were flying neither to the west, nor to the east. They simply got tired of the reality and rose above it.” Half a century on from its release in 1973, the leitmotifs of Eccentrics remain deeply resonant and relevant, especially at a time when love and harmony seem to be in short supply an

3.06GB | 1h 18m | 1920×1080 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/19F144B1C4B86E1/Eccentrics_(1973).mkv

Language(s):Georgian
Subtitles:English

The post Eldar Shengelaia – Sherekilebi AKA The Eccentrics (1974) first appeared on Cinema of the World.