A famous Georgian director came to Tajikistan for the Toji Somon film festival. One evening they organized an informal meeting for him in a Dushanbe cafe. Tajik journalist Manizha Kurbanova told how it happened on her Facebook page.
“Yesterday (October 18) another extraordinary creative evening took place in Nukri’s cafe (entrepreneur, owner of a cafe with Georgian cuisine). Unexpectedly, but quite expectedly (our friend can!) Nukri Georgadze invited here the famous Soviet-Georgian director, screenwriter, writer and teacher Irakli Kvirikadze, who came to Tajikistan at the invitation of the organizing committee for the First International Film Festival “Toji Somon”.
Despite the fact that on this day, 84-year-old Irakli Mikhailovich conducted two master classes as part of the festival, he found time and informally met with admirers of his talent, talking about his life and work in cinema.
“Night. Moon. Ravine”
Although I already knew that the script for Bakhtiyor Khudoynazarov’s film “Moon Dad” was based on Georgian history, it was interesting to hear the details from the mouth of the author who wrote it.
It turns out that the story of the main character Mamlakat is real and it happened in the provincial Georgian town of Khashuri.
The 14-year-old daughter of a local policeman became pregnant. As it turned out, by accident. One moonlit evening, returning from watching a play at a visiting theater on tour, she fell into a ravine and was seduced by a certain stranger who called himself an actor.
The father, in order to avoid shame, together with his daughter traveled to all the theaters of the country to find the scoundrel who seduced his daughter.
“This is a Tajik script”
According to Irakli Mikhailovich, since such a story could happen in any southern republic, including Tajikistan, he and Bakhtik took it as a basis. When it was necessary to write the names of the characters, Kvirikadze used a list of telephone numbers of filmmakers in Tajikistan, borrowing a first name somewhere and a last name somewhere. This is how Mamlakat, Safar, Nasredin turned out…
“This, of course, is a Tajik script,” noted Irakli Mikhailovich, “Amazing music by Daler Nazarov. I’m glad that after this film Bakhtik went up, people started talking about him and he became the favorite of all film festivals.”
History of the “Jug”
The history of the famous Georgian comedy-short film “Jug” is even more interesting. If only because this is Kvirikadze’s debut as a director. And the film was shot back in 1970.
Irakli Mikhailovich said that together with Rezo Gabriadze they did not write any script, but simply freely adapted one of the short stories by the Italian writer Pirandello, where in fact a jug of olives broke, and they changed it and it turned out to be a jug for storing wine.
According to the director, “they made movies easily because…they drank,” and this happened for a reason independent of the film crew: this is how local authorities honored the famous Georgian actor Erosi Manjgaladze, who agreed to play the head of a police department in the film (by the way, after The triumph of the film, the actor called this episodic role the best in his career).
Some episodes were invented impromptu, on the fly.
There were some oddities: once the film crew, having hastily gathered for another treat, forgot in the jug the actor who played the master Absalom (as I understand it, this is assimilated from the Arabic Abdusalom). The poor actor actually had to spend the night in a jug, where he suffered and froze, and in the morning he was very indignant.
“No one except me thought that all this would make a good movie,” Kvirikadze joked originally. And he was right. This comedy is still remembered and watched.
Thank you, film festival!
The meeting in the cafe lasted more than two hours. Those present, and these were representatives of the country’s cultural and art sphere, asked questions, and the guest tried to answer everyone.
Irakli Mikhailovich considers Federico Fellini the best director, “but I love Chaplin’s films no less.” Meanwhile, he called both Tarkovsky and Antonioni his favorites, because “their films are more filigree in art.”
He also spoke about Georgian cinema, recalling the funny story of his student, the famous director Temur Babluani, coming into cinema. And about his views on modern world cinema, noting that “today there is a lot of hackwork in it, but little soul and heartbeat.”
“I live in cinema, I exist in it,” the master of cinema finally said, and he was right. Because his whole life, with its ups and downs, belongs to the art of cinema.
We are glad that thanks to the Tajik film festival, which is taking place in Dushanbe these days, we have a great opportunity to enjoy communication with such a Personality as Irakli Mikhailovich Kvirikadze.”
Source: Asia Plus TJ
