Series Site
September 10–17, 2023
“BAMPFA welcomes Georgian filmmaker Salomé Jashi (born 1981 in Tbilisi) for her first visit to the Bay Area with this retrospective of her films, for which she serves as both director and cinematographer. Jashi, who studied journalism and worked as a reporter for several years before becoming a filmmaker, is a keen observer of the changes her country has gone through in recent decades, including the pressures of external threats on Georgia’s independence. A recurrent theme in her films is the idea of culture being uprooted, forcing communities to migrate from their homes. Jashi is equally attentive to chronicling societal change and has a penchant for capturing surreal imagery and situations. Indeed, Jashi’s films have a beautiful visual quality, distinguished by her striking frame compositions, sense of color, and decision to film on location in different regions of Georgia.
Working in the terrain of nonfiction, Jashi and her films have received significant attention at international festivals, where she has been the recipient of numerous awards. Bakhmaro (2011) is a work we presented in BAMPFA’s Discovering Georgian Cinema retrospective in 2014–15. The Dazzling Light of Sunset (2016) was a breakthrough film for Jashi, and her most recent feature-length film, Taming the Garden (2021), premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and received US theatrical distribution. This series represents an important chance to see and hear from one of Georgia’s most talented filmmakers, an artist who uses film’s creative power as a vehicle for her nuanced social and political critique. Jashi introduces the 1928 Georgian silent classic Eliso, a historical epic directed by Nikoloz Shengelaia that evokes the tragic fate of the hilltop town community of Verdi in 1864, and the subsequent forced migration by the Russian military of the Chechen people across the nearby border into the Ottoman Empire.”
—Susan Oxtoby, Director of Film and Senior Film Curator