22-05-2022

Georgian Film Professionals Initiative Group launches Campaign - For Municipal Cinema

    Apollo in the 1950s Apollo in the 1950s author unknown

    Since the privatization of movie theaters in Georgia began, the country's most important cinemas (Rustaveli, Apollo) have radically modified their function, causing a massive gap between films and audiences. As long as Georgian films celebrate victory at home and abroad from festival to festival, filmmakers individually try to screen their films where they were shot; it must be emphasized that due to the scarcity of cinemas, Georgian films to a large extent remain unattended; whereas the interest of film viewers in Georgian cinema is growing from year to year. The large number of attendees at Georgian film festivals, growing interest in the retrospectives of the archive cinema or film screenings in the cinema house is factual evidence to this.

    The initiative group, the team of Georgian film researchers, film professionals and cinephiles few months ago launched a campaign for establishing a municipal cinema in Tbilisi.

    The initiative group publishes the petition:

    “Our petition applies to anyone who has been affected by the urge to talk to someone at least once after watching a movie; anyone who has thought about the social nature and meaning of cinema, anyone who believes in the commonality of a film session. It applies to you, who spend the gloomy days in unbearable inaccessibility; who are yet to encounter the experience of cinema; municipal cinema belongs to you!

    We declare that a city without a municipal cinema is a gazeless city; the materialized boredom and homelessness, bereft of new possibilities of vision.

    In the age of dynamic loss of meanings, in which we live today, scribblers from theoretical heights preach a modern religion of indifference; that there is no longer any distinction between the film-product being subservient to the cult of money and "essential cinema" (Jonas Mekas' concept). But we take this distinction to be of utmost necessity. As an alternative to commercial cinemas, to expensive tickets and homogeneous images, we are considering to establish a municipal cinema. The place driving idea of which will be a better understanding of social life through cinema, the creation of shared meanings among people, reflection on the passed days and contemporaneity, liberation of mind and eyes.

    Our goal is to establish a network of municipal cinemas in Tbilisi and gradually in all regional centers of Georgia; spaces with a multifaceted understanding of reality and with a sense for communality; places of love, equality, support, which through the power of cinema will play their role in a critical perception of the present  and defining the future more clearly.

    We are encouraged by what connects us to our peers in time and space.”

    The original source of the petition: https://manifest.ge/item/3731?fbclid=IwAR0t4rSWMXGb9Qo0xTNV6IqxshJUVUzw-h8Axrb4C2oAnYmDRfX4WPg8lKs

    Last modified on 22-05-2022
    Published in Press releases
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