Black Shorts - Experiments from Georgia

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. Chiatura, my Pride explores how this extraordinary transport system gives character to the city forty years after its installation.

“...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.

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 re-valued objects, with those who handle them as part of their everyday lives.

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.

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…