FILM CONCERT

CHEMI BEBIA (“My Grandmother”), directed by Kote Mikaberidze, USSR 1929, 72 min.

A grotesque, witty and ironic satire against bureaucracy and philistinism which was shut away from the public during the soviet era for almost 50 years. The protagonist is a lazy civil servant who is fired because his bureaucratic idleness and fails to find a new employment. When his wife threatens to leave him if he does not find a new job immediately, he learns from a friend that the way back into employment depends on getting a letter of recommendation from a “grandmother” – a protection… A masterpiece of the early eccentric anarchic soviet cinema.

“Kote Mikaberidze’s MY GRANDMOTHER is easier to look at as an explosion of experimental energy, channeled through every available camera trick and editing technique, than as a coherent film. It’s a thrillingly odd expression of its time – the short-lived exuberance of the Soviet avant-garde before it was labeled as ‘formalism’ and strangled to death to clear the way for Socialist Realism.” (Julia Zelman)

At the grand piano: Dudana Mazmanishvili, concert pianist and cultural attaché of the Georgian embassy, Berlin

Date: Wednesday, 2^nd of May, 8.00 pm, “Filmpalast Capitol”, Cinema Hall 1