BLACK SHORTS
Five experimental short films on everyday life in Georgia


18th November (Friday)
08:00 PM / Wyspa Institute of Art
Screening In Georgian with English and Polish subtitles
Free entrance


In May 2011, twenty young creative people from across Europe met for the first time in Garikula, Georgia to share their diverse skills, undertake training in filmmaking, form into small multinational working groups and set off across the country to explore everyday life in Georgia. The resulting Black Shorts are as diverse as they are intriguing. The films capture the lively theatrics of death in Kutaisi; the endearing character of a barber’s shop in Tbilisi; the second life of objects as scrap metal in-andaround Zugdidi; the highflying web of cable cars in Chiatura; and a day in the life of an underpass’s resident band in Tbilisi.


gulo
Gulo is a film that explores the line between death and life, visualising the theatrical happenings and settings surrounding burial rituals. Often death is presented as the ending of life, something feared by people. Contrary to this, Gulo shows the diverse approaches to death and reveals the thoughts of people who are directly connected to the passageway between life and death: "death no longer interests me. I wish I had a different life, I want to be on stage.” Gulo is shot in Kutaisi.(15:41 mins) (A film by Elene Asatiani, Eliane Bots, Mirek Koranda and Sophia Tabatadze)

hairminators
Hair – it’s one of the most visible parts of our body whether black or white, long or short, straight or curly. This black short concentrates on hair as a character and takes place where it is shaped – a barber’s shop in Tbilisi. Nowadays many mainstream salons are alike, but the barber shop in Hairminators retains the ‘white gowned’ spirit of old. Waiting involves dominoes, eating, chatting, singing, or even sleeping before the hair which “needs to be organized” arrives… (14:25 mins)
(A film by Data Chigholashvili, Salome Joglidze and Birgit Kuch)

harvest georgia
Weathered hands move scrap metal from the homes of those who live in and around Zugdidi to the Black Sea port of Poti, and Georgian society moves too, moulding itself around one of the country’s leading exports. From bathtubs, bedsprings and boilers to pots & pans, tin cans and coat stands... in Harvest Georgia the process of scrap metal collecting,
weighing and exporting is told through the interaction of these revalued objects, with those who handle them as part of their everyday lives.(6:37 mins)
(A film by Odeta Catana, Ian Cook, Angelika Herta and Zhenya Zakharova)

chiatura, my pride
Chiatura was once one of the most prosperous industrial cities in Georgia, boasting rich resources of manganese. Due its location in a steep valley surrounded by high mountains, Chiatura installed a system of cable cars to transport workers to and from the mines, as well as manganese from the mines to the factories. With deindustrialisation the manganese industry shrank and Chiatura’s population halved, but many of the cable cars still run, establishing a net between the city and its people. Mind the Gap explores how this extraordinary transport system gives character to the city forty years after its installation.(13:43 mins)
(A film by Stephanie Endter, Max Kuzmenko, Lisa Müller, Ulrike Penk and Kajetan Tadrowski)

under a
“...form of government: presidential parliamentary democracy. Official language: Georgian. Population: 4.6 million. Capital:
Tbilisi.” As the eye deciphers the fading inscriptions in the underground passage and the body instinctively avoids the
commercial humdrum, the ear catches the music. Under a is a film about the passage that runs under Tbilisi’s centrally located Freedom Square, and follows a band’s everyday flow in an underground place filled with tunes.(16:07 mins)
(A film by Natalia Buier, Madis Kats, Filip Pospíšil and Mikheil Svanidze)

Black Shorts is generously funded by the European Cultural Foundation and The Open Society Institute.
Project by Plotki (Rejs e.V.), Sakdoc Film and the Centre for Arts and Culture at the Central European University .