Pirosmani
Giorgi Shengelaia
1971 | 85 min | Colour | Digital
Georgian with English subtitles

Pirosmani is a poetic biography of the great Georgian primitivist artist Nikoloz Pirosmanishvili, who worked prior to 1920. Giorgi Shengelaia avoids the usual clichés of films about artists' lives, successfully experimenting with colour control techniques based on the painter's style. Avtandil Varazi plays the gentle, uncompromising artist who sold his paintings to bars and restaurants for food and drink, and worked mostly in solitude.

“Shengelaia’s film constructs a series of impressionistic tableaux from incidents in Pirosmani’s life. Each tableau takes its style from Piarosmani’s own paintings, with simple lines and pastel colors, figures poised suggestively in space, and further resonance derived from references to the work of the French impressionists” – New Directors/New Films

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Part of Georgia 100: Film/Fest/Feast.

Supported by Life Through Cinema and cARTveli foundation. With thanks to Gareth Evans, Daniel Bird, Nino Andjaparidze, Levan Lomjaria, Giorgi Shengelaya, and David Vashadze.