Jim Shvante (Salt for Svanetia), 1930
Director: Mikhail Kalatozov
Writer: Sergei Tretyakov
Music: Zoran Borisavljevic
VHS, b/w, 53’
The documentary by the Georgian director Mikhail Kalatozov (1903-1973) will be shown in the frame of the exhibition endless enclosure by Thea Djordjadze. It tells the story of the people of Svanetia, a remote region in northwest Georgia, where life is marked with the daily struggle for survival. Through a powerful and expressive visual language and experimental montage in the tradition of the Soviet revolutionary cinema, Kalatozov anticipates in this film the success of his later films such as Soy Cuba (1964), a social-realist drama about the Cuban Revolution.
With an introduction by Daniel Baumann. Besides giving background information on the movie, he will talk about Georgian Modernism.
Daniel Baumann lives as an independent curator in Basel and has realized several exhibitions in Tbilisi since 2004 (a.o. Tbilisi 1. Tuesday Is Gone, 2004 to Tbilisi 5. Wednesday Was Thursday, 2008). At the moment he is preparing an exhibition on Georgian Modernism that will be shown at Casey Kaplan, New York in June 2009.
Location: STADTKINO BASEL (Klostergasse 5)
Admission: 12.-/For members of the Basler Kunstverein 6.-
Afterwards Bar
Image: Mikhail Kalatozov, Jim Shvante, 1930. Film still