Georgian Cinema Studies: 

Observations, Challenges, and the Colonial Legacy 

Author

Nino Dzandzava

Abstract

The collapse of the Soviet Union allowed for newly critical discourse and access to archives, shedding light on the history of Soviet censorship. Previously unknown primary sources, testimonies, and official documents have entered scholarly discourse. However, narratives rooted in colonial history and present-day Russian expansionism have persisted. This article examines the established Soviet approaches towards knowledge production in film studies within the postcolonial framework and reflects on today's practices and deficiencies in reconstructing film heritage. It also critically explores Soviet Georgian films exhibiting colonial cultural codes and stereotypes. These examples illustrate the topics and the representations that played an instrumental role in establishing and strengthening colonial perspectives with the help of the film medium.

Keywords

Soviet Union, Russian Empire, Georgia, early cinema, Georgian cinema, decolonisation, cultural stereotypes, Aleksandre Duduchava, military filmmaking, Simon Esadze, Russian archives, Krasnogorsk, Tbilisi, Yerevan, Vakhtang (Buba) Kikabidze, Tamaz Gomelauri, Mimino, Frunzik Mkrtchian, Giorgi Danelia.

The collapse of the Soviet Union provided new opportunities to review accumulated knowledge in the humanities. It also allowed for a more critical understanding of Soviet cultural narratives, thus revising and creating a new discourse on the subject. Banned or censored films, as well as documentation related to their production, have become available to film scholars in the last 30-plus years. In the research process, the methodology of collecting the previously unknown testimonies of film creators has gained particular value. For more than 30 years, new knowledge has accumulated in the post-Soviet world, knowledge that has shed light on a number of important historical facts and events.

However, changing the theoretical framework for knowledge reconstruction and, specifically, applying postcolonial methodologies to revising cultural paradigms is still uncommon. On the one hand, this situation has led to a misinterpretation of history and the impediment of broader academic research. On the other hand, it goes hand in hand with the still dominant colonial aspirations of Russia’s mainstream political practices and further helps to reinforce cultural stereotypes.

Based on the empirical methodologies of the colonised, we often consider certain historical narratives as generally accepted ‘truths’, failing to recognise they may also be ideologically biassed. These unquestioned preconceptions are often glimpsed in terminology (e.g., colony or imperial periphery) and language preferences (e.g. “na Kavkaze”, “na Ukraine” versus “v Kavkaze”, “v Ukraine”).¹

The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, has contributed to reevaluating the post-Soviet cultural scene formerly believed to be irrevocably fixed or ‘Russian. However, failures to understand the complexity of cultures in Russia’s historical sphere of influence have prevailed in academia until recently (Chakravorty Spivak, Gayatri, Nancy Condee, Harsha Ram and Vitaly Chernetsky 2006: 832).² Carrying out comprehensive, very much needed, decolonial cultural analysis in former parts of Russian and Soviet empires calls first for decolonising academia and knowledge production, thereby presenting an opportunity to create a solid ground for revisiting history and cultural heritage.

Manifestations of Colonial Approaches to Knowledge Production

Dogmatic knowledge, accumulated over generations in the Soviet historiographical tradition, has broadly defined the postcolonial experiences of the former Soviet republics. The Soviet modus operandi has occasionally ignored earlier, pre-Soviet cultural legacies. At the same time, in the 1920s, it also gave much attention to the revival or recreation of national histories, thus strengthening nation-building in the peripheries.³

In promoting the so-called liberation of the oppressed nations and their culture, the Soviet government played a double game. Historians, including art and film researchers, played along. On the one hand, when it came to folklore, folk dance, polyphony, and textile art, the Soviet system loudly proclaimed the rebirth of centuries-old cultural traditions. On the other hand, it questioned the existence, solidity, and diversity of the relatively new creative industries that emerged during the Industrial Revolution, such as cinema.

Soviet researchers largely ignored the film process that existed before the revolution (Duduchava 1933: 8).⁴ The mechanisms of neglect were of two kinds: diminishment and disregard of the historical process. Soviet approaches towards apprehending film history and the modern studies of pre- and Soviet cinema occasionally coincided and conformed to each other in failing to grasp the complexity of film cultures outside the imperial centres.

Taking the Georgian example, there was no large film industry before the Bolsheviks occupied the country. But saying that cinema did not exist is not accurate. Before the Bolsheviks, film culture in Georgia occurred precisely as the colonial past and present allowed for the country, which was economically poor and politically oppressed but possessed rich cultural traditions.

The treatment of Simon Esadze, a pioneer of Georgian cinema, by Soviet and Russian scholars and archivists illustrates the neglect of cultural experiences accumulated in the colony. This case is not one of denial or concealment, but instead rests on falsification of history and raises the problematic aspects of historiography and film heritage preservation today.

In the 2010s, the Krasnogorsk Archive began studying and restoring the Skobelev Committee film collection. Following comprehensive film restoration practices, archivists researched the film collections in Krasnogorsk and the Skobelev Committee’s history before undertaking technical preservation activities. During the research, they consulted published primary sources, the press, Vishnevskii’s filmography and archive, and clarified many details and discovered mistakes in some references. Fortunately, the archivists described these studies and their methodologies during the process. The preservation documentation in journal articles shows that archivists collected some films from fragments and “restored disrupted editing” (Malysheva 2016: 544).

During the First World War, a state-sponsored entity, the Skobelev Committee, possessed exclusive rights to film the frontlines. However, there were some exceptions to this monopoly. Simon Esadze, representing the Military History Department of the Caucasus Military District Headquarters in Tiflis and his cameraman Alexander Shvugerman also produced a series of newsreels picturing the First World War. Among them, two of the most famous – Padenie Erzeruma / The Fall of Erzurum (Esadze, 1916, Russian Empire) and Vziatie Trapezunda / The Capture of Trabzon (Esadze, 1916, Russian Empire) – were widely distributed in the Russian Empire. The Soviet filmography of pre-revolutionary Russian documentaries gives the latter film under a different title; however, the information on the producer and authors of the film is also inaccurate (Vishnevskii 1996: 277). Here, Soviet film scholar Ven’iamin Vishnevskii combined the titles of two different films. In reality, one of these films was by Esadze and Shvugerman, while the other was produced by the Skobelev Committee and its cinematographers. Vishnevskii lists seven other Esadze films in his filmography. Nevertheless, he consistently names people who worked for the Skobelev Committee, not for Simon Esadze, as the cinematographers.⁵

While working on their preservation project, the archivists at Krasnogorsk came across two differently titled fragments of the newsreel shot in Erzerum: Shturm i vziatie Erzeruma / The Attack and Conquest of Erzurum and Shturm i Padenie Erzeruma / The Attack and the Fall of Erzurum (Malysheva 2014: 22). According to Galina Malysheva, the intertitles of both fragments were identical. However, both were missing the beginning, which was supposed to show the movement of the Russian troops in the valleys of the Caucasus, the attack at the fortresses, the capture of Erzerum by the Russians on February 3, and some other events (ibid.). The archivists found these shots in another movie — Na putiakh k Trapezundu / On the Way to Trabzon. However, since the credits in these reels were formatted differently (in one case, the credits got numbers, and in the other, not), the archivists concluded that the Skobelev Committee had edited the parts of The Attack and Conquest of Erzurum into another film. The restoration managers deciphered the historical events according to the magazine Letopis’ voiny, compared the content and length of the film materials and combined the three parts into the film Shturm i vziatie Erzeruma / The Attack and Conquest of Erzurum attributed to the Skobelev Committee (ibid.). The description of the restoration process delivers a reasonable suspicion that in Krasnogorsk, it was not different fragments of the same film, but two different films, shot by different creative groups and institutions, that were combined.⁶

Documentation of the research conducted in Krasnogorsk mentions Esadze only in one paragraph, and the only question raised about him is whether he was a cameraman or “the organiser of the shootings” of some films, further elaborating that Esadze’s role is “quite unclear” (Malysheva 2016: 542).

The fact that preservation documentation does not mention conducting research in the National Archives of Georgia or gaining information about the production of the First World War films by the film unit of the Military History Department in Tbilisi has essentially defined the restoration process and the results, which raises doubts regarding the integrity and authenticity of the film preserved or the story told.

Soviet or post-Soviet film scholars or archivists not paying due attention to cinematic works produced in the remote areas of the Empire not only speaks to particular perspectives towards the cultural process in the periphery but also undermines the integrity of film heritage and the accuracy of reconstructing the general historical picture.

Some Examples of Decolonialised Readings of the Soviet National Film Heritage

Shifting political narratives call for reexamining the vast corpus of cinematic oeuvres created with the blended visions of colonising and self-colonising throughout pre-Soviet and Soviet film histories. Providing fertile ground for critical reading, the Soviet Georgian film heritage contains numerous occurrences of imposed cultural codes and prevailing stereotypes of colonial nature. Produced in parallel with subversive films carrying open or hidden anti-Soviet messages, many fiction, documentary, or kulturfilms played an instrumental role in establishing or strengthening colonial perspectives in the Georgian Republic.

Soviet Georgian cinema often reflects the orientalised conception applied to Georgian culture from the outside, e.g., the preconceived image of a ‘real’ Caucasian, more specifically, a ‘real’ Georgian that had been dominant in Russian culture since the wars to conquer the Caucasus. The formation of stereotypical views of the nations subordinated to the dominant Russian culture and the generalisation of supposedly common national characteristics paralleled Russia’s southeastern expansion, finding their place first in Russian classical literature and later in other artistic disciplines, including film.

At the same time, national cultures themselves reproduced imperial narratives. Many Georgian films demonstrate the presence of self-exotification and self-stereotyping. In this regard, filmmaker Tamaz Gomelauri’s and Vakhtang (Buba) Kikabidze’s relatively late Soviet film Itsotskhle, genatsvale! / Cheers, My Dear! (1981) is highly illustrative. The film consists of four novellas. All four contain the refrain of a song by Kikabidze about the Georgian customs of friendship and devotion, the importance of people helping each other in difficult situations, and doing good deeds in general. One verse of the song ends every episode and poetically sums up their morals. The song introduces us to the ancient culture, in which “the song of brotherhood has been sung since ancient times'', and explains that if one wants to have a relationship with a Georgian, one should have many friends (“Have many friends if you long for a Georgian”).

While providing the image of a stereotypically positive Georgian, the film shows characters ready to undertake surprising and eccentric actions in the name of friendship and loyalty. For example, to please his visiting Armenian friend from Yerevan and realise his dream of sailing on the river in Tbilisi by a traditional boat, Buba Kikabidze removes a wall in his apartment, builds a boat with it, and offers it for sailing. The episode ends with a hardly imaginable, vulgar absurdity.⁷

The filmmakers offer a surprising finale in every episode. With this, they seem to wish to create the impression that the importance of friendship for Georgians defies comprehension. Therefore, the filmmakers test the limits of the audience’s astonishment from episode to episode.

Along with presenting the image of a hospitable but frivolous, irrational, and unpredictable Georgian, the film promotes Georgian culture. Let us go back to the episode with the guest from Yerevan. A dinner is held in an old pre-revolutionary house in Tbilisi. The non-Soviet interior, old items and pre-revolutionary photos, the clothes of Buba Kikabidze’s mother — everything speaks of the age of the culture maintained by family members. The panoramic shots of the streets of Tbilisi further reinforce the filmmaker’s claim to show off the country’s general attractiveness. Accompanied by the song mentioned above, these beautiful shots look like an advertising video made by a tourist agency.