Georgian Filmmaker Salomé Jashi in Person

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. Working in the terrain of nonfiction, she uses film’s creative power as a vehicle for her nuanced social and political critique. Jashi’s films (including Taming the Garden, The Dazzling Light of Sunset, and Bakhmaro) 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.

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Taming the Garden
Their Helicopter
Bakhmaro
The Dazzling Light of Sunset
Eliso

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Past Films

Off-Site Screening: Taming the Garden
Salomé Jashi
Georgia, Switzerland, Germany, 2021
Off-Site Outdoor Screening at the UC Botanical Garden’s Redwood Grove, 200 Centennial Dr, Berkeley
Sunday, September 10 7 PM
Salomé Jashi in Person
The opening shot of this striking environmental tale captures a tree as tall as a fifteen-story building floating on a barge across the vast Black Sea. Its destination lies in a garden countless miles away, privately owned by a wealthy and anonymous man whose passion is the removal, and subsequent replanting, of foreign trees into his own man-made Eden.
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Taming the Garden
Salomé Jashi
Georgia, Switzerland, Germany, 2021
Thursday, September 14 7 PM
Salomé Jashi in Person
The opening shot of this striking environmental tale captures a tree as tall as a fifteen-story building floating on a barge across the vast Black Sea. Its destination lies in a garden countless miles away, privately owned by a wealthy and anonymous man whose passion is the removal, and subsequent replanting, of foreign trees into his own man-made Eden.
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Bakhmaro
Salomé Jashi
Germany, Georgia, 2011
Friday, September 15 7 PM
Salomé Jashi in Person
A meditation on a lively but decaying building that once used to be a hotel called Bakhmaro in a provincial Georgian town. At the center of the building is a restaurant where tables are set, waiting for customers who rarely come. Paired with two short films, Their Helicopter (2006) and A Crypto Rush Aftermath (2023).
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Eliso
Nikoloz Shengelaia
USSR, 1928
BAMPFA Collection
Saturday, September 16 4:30 PM
Introduced by Salomé Jashi; Judith Rosenberg on Piano
One of Georgian cinema’s greatest silent film achievements, this historical epic evokes the tragic fate of a nation pacified in 1864 by the Tsarist Russian Empire. It features beautiful portrayals of Caucasus customs and celebrations.
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The Dazzling Light of Sunset
Salomé Jashi
Georgia, Germany, Finland, 2016
Sunday, September 17 7 PM
Salomé Jashi in Person
Beautifully shot and strangely comic, Jashi’s documentary The Dazzling Light of Sunset follows Dariko and Khaka, an ultra-low-budget local news team in rural western Georgia. Paired with two short films, The Tower and Speechless.
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Georgian Filmmaker Salomé Jashi in Person

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

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Part of Out of the Vault, an occasional series featuring films from BAMPFA’s collection, funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. Thanks to Shirley Watts, independent curator of the outdoor screening, and our campus partners: the UC Botanical Garden; History of Art Department; ISEEES; Linda Rugg, former associate vice chancellor of research, who facilitated this collaboration; and Linda Wroth for supporting the acquisition of a number of Salomé Jashi's films for the collection.

Georgian Filmmaker Salomé Jashi in Person

September 10–17, 2023

Past Films

Off-Site Screening: Taming the Garden

Taming the Garden

Bakhmaro

Eliso

The Dazzling Light of Sunset