PRODUCTION: Georgian Director Tamta Gabrichidze Preps Mugamati

13-02-2020

PRODUCTION: Georgian Director Tamta Gabrichidze Preps Mugamati

By Alexander Gabelia

Mugamati by Tamta Gabrichidze

TBILISI: Georgian director Tamta Gabrichidze is currently in preproduction with her first long documentary Mugamati. The filming is planned for the summer of 2020. Gabrichidze’s short documentary The Trader / Sovdagari was awarded at Sundance and HoT Docs, and became the first Georgian documentary distributed by Netflix worldwide.

There is a small green garden in Tbilisi, where the duduk players (musicians who play a traditional woodwind instrument called duduk) wait for their clients. They never know in advance where they are going to play their music – in a village or a town, in joys or sorrow. They do not know how much the client is going to pay, or if they pay at all.

„Mugamati is going to be a documentary without any interviews or explanations, filmed through observational camera with long static frames and mystic elements, in a format specific to photo esthetics. The main goal for me is to play with contrasts: both the atmosphere and the story. On the one hand a modern European city, Tbilisi, and on the other hand the life in different regions, the young generation, with their dreams and goals next to the life of elderly problems… I want to film an image built on contrasts which convey the content through the documentary/fiction storytelling. One of the most important instruments of storytelling is the music diverse in genres and loaded with content. I would like to completely remove the barrier between the screen and the viewers “, Tamta Gabrichidze told FNE.

She is also the producer. The project received a production grant of 12,305 EUR / 36,917 GEL from the Georgian National Film Center in 2019 and it also received development support of 3,175 EUR / 10,000 GEL from the Georgian Public Broadcaster. The total budget is 65,000 EUR / 208,000 GEL. International coproducers are welcome.

The premiere is expected for the winter of 2021.

Tamta Gabrichidze’s short documentary The Trader / Sovdagari premiered at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, where it won the Best Short Documentary Award. Afterwards the film traveled extensively and received more than 15 awards, including the Sundance Film Festival Short Filmmaking Award.

Production Information:

Producer:
Tamta Gabrichidze (Georgia)
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Credits:
Director: Tamta Gabrichidze
Scriptwriter: Tamta Gabrichidze
DoP: tba

Published in Georgia