Caucadoc: Pirosmani is Online
Morning atmosphere. Sitting on the balcony outside the restaurant room of Hotel Pirosmani (for those who don’t recognise the name of the painter, link below), fresh air, 8am. It’s already hot so a bottle of mineral water is within reach. The square outside is like a stage that will slowly be occupied by the inhabitants of this small town in Eastern Georgia, Sighnaghi, which has been an object for modernization towards attracting tourism. And tourists come during the day.
Old people are the first to enter the stage walking with a stick and/or placing themselves on a chair in the shade chatting and waving good morning to newcomers. Stray dogs find a place outside the sun as well, taking some steps once in a while. A green old car comes to the hotel with bread from the baker, a woman carries newspapers and magazines to be sold at the other corner of the square. I ask one of the filmmakers, who are up for breakfast if the cigarette shop is open. No, he laughs, you are in Georgia, that is too early. A nanny strolls with a baby trolley, local buses come with people who go to work in the buildings around the square, including the monster of a new building for the municipality. It’s all calm and nice.
We enter the conference room and Salomé Jashi introduces the ”I am a character” exercise. 40 minutes are given to the filmmakers to write their speech which is delivered in a plenary session. It works quite well, you see who can ”talk visually” and who can interpret how they see one of their characters. It’s fun and the young filmmakers are trained in standing in front of their colleagues, which is not that easy for several of them.
Nino Orjonikidze and I take over to present what to put in a project one-pager – the next exercise for the participants, who have some hours to bring down their many pages to one. The one-pager of ”Bakhmaro” is shown as a good example, as well as the one of ”The English Teacher”. From there to watching the trailer of ”Bakhmaro” (photo) and ”The English Teacher”, both of them from my point of view very professional and inviting. Finally director Shorena Tevzadze and producer Nikoloz Gogochuri generously show their trailers (one of them more a research scene) to discuss with the colleagues what works and how to proceed.
The rooms are full of working people and very often, you hear ”Pirosmani is Online” = the internet connection of the hotel that falls out, and comes back again.
