Tuesday, May 5, 2015

The father of the Georgian film school – Kommersant

89, died Rezo Chkheidze – the famous Georgian director, teacher, producer and writer of the film “Father of a Soldier” firmly entered into the classic arsenal Soviet cinema.

Revaz Chkheidze (such is his full name, but in the film world called him Rezo) started his career with another graduate of VGIK Tengiz Abuladze. Their joint film “Lurdzha Magdany” award at the Cannes Film Festival as the first independent picture Chkheidze “Our yard”, created under the influence of Italian neo-realism, which proved to be particularly close to the Georgian mentality. Abuladze and Chkheidze became fathers of the Georgian “New Wave”, and she joined the multinational Soviet cinema thaw, differing thus its own unique flavor. Georgians to express their identity is not required to force the folklore of paint: their national character and temperament, their innate artistry and plasticity, their philosophicity and sense of humor, it seems, quite spontaneously splashed on the screen.

The peak of creativity Chkheidze was the film “Father of a Soldier” written with veteran Suliko Zhgenti magnificent role Sergo Zakariadze. His hero, the Georgian peasant goes to the front to the wounded man’s son, comes to Berlin, where the long-awaited meeting and painful: a wounded son dies at the hands of his father. Today, when it celebrated the anniversary of the Victory and around it accumulated so many ideological contradictions, just right to recall this film Chkheidze. It reflected the clear, bright, humanistic consciousness of the postwar world, has not yet healed the wounds and injuries, but aspiring to the future with faith in the original goodness inherent in the person.

As with everything Soviet cinema, after the first post-war Georgia has matured next generational wave director, even more powerful, and those who are older, it integrated. In 1960-1970 years of the Georgian cinema has reached new heights in the work of the brothers Shengelia, Otar Iosseliani and other fine writers studio “Georgia-Film”. A guided it for decades none other than Rezo Chkheidze. He took a few more pictures, but we can say that his main occupation was to consolidate the creative forces of the studio, and the case he donated own directorial ambitions. He had to take on bumps and hurdles erected by the party bosses, sometimes semi-official launch projects to lull Moscow censorship. He always supported young talented directors and achieved a unique microclimate in the studio, where were kept to a minimum such conventional satellites creative life, envy and intrigue. Greatly to his credit that the cinema in Georgia at that time, has become a matter of national prestige, and the world has acquired a reputation as an “island of antiquity and the Renaissance” – that characterized the attitude and style of the authors of Georgia’s film school.

In 1986, I came to Tbilisi and to the participants of the battle for the film” Repentance “, launched and filmed at the studio” Georgia-Film “, but put on the shelf. We looked at a picture of the three of the forbidden – with Rezo Chkheidze and director of the film Tengiz Abuladze. The studio room was no one else, but in the projectionist booth crammed twenty people who wanted to see this film is covered with legends. The next day we sent him a copy of Moscow showed Elemu Klimov and the secretariat, newly elected at the V Congress of the Union of Cinematographers. Six months later, “Repentance” was released the country, has become a huge event, a milestone in the exposure of Stalinism, six months later won an award at the Cannes festival, went around the world.

It took more than twenty years to the Georgian cinema experienced its golden age in the late Soviet era, and then lapsed into an economic and creative collapse revived. And despite all the differences, in the director’s latest film representatives of the waves is easy to see the influence of the strong artistic tradition, which was founded Revaz Chkheidze and his contemporaries.

Andrew Plakhov


LikeTweet

No comments:

Post a Comment