Keti Gigashvilli
Keti Gigashvili graduated from the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs (GIPA), Caucasus school of journalism and media management. She had been working as a news reporter for almost a year, and then later moved onto investigative journalism. Gigashvili previously worked for Studio GNS and also for one of the investigative TV programs. Currently, she is working for Studio Monitor. She is interested in documentary films, and her film “A Parcel from Athens” is a winner of the GIPA DOCU, which was also screened at the Batumi International Film Festival.
Author's stories
Abdullah Tataroglu lives in the village of Gazelli, in the Inegol Region of Bursa Province in western Turkey. Although he was born with Turkish surname, he has always considered himself a Gurji, which translates as “Georgian.” His ancestral roots lie in Adjara, the coastal province of western Georgia on the country’s border with Turkey. During more than two and a half centuries of Ottoman Turkish rule, many Adjarans converted to Islam while retaining the Georgian language and culture. By the end of the 19th century between 22,000 and 25,000 Adjarans had fled to Turkey; among them Abdullah’s great-grandfather Yusuf Mikeladze.
Abdullah is a schoolteacher by profession, and holds language lessons for ethnic Georgians every week. The Georgian spoken in Georgia today is very different from that which the younger generation of villagers learnt from their parents and grandparents. That presents a challenge to both students and teacher, but Abdullah hopes it is one they will overcome together.
Family histories like that of 57-year-old Abdullah are not so unusual in Turkey, where the descendants of several ethnic groups from the Caucasus still live today. In the Inegol Region, where Gazelli is located, there are 18 villages originally founded by Georgian emigres. However, over the years Georgians who resettled in Turkey began to assimilate into Turkish society. In the early years of the Turkish Republic, ethnic minorities were obliged to “Turkicize” their surnames; as a result, some of the original surnames in Gurji villages were lost.
But even as they had to take new names, the Gurji villagers retained their love for their native language. After centuries of separation from their ancestral homeland, locals in Abdullah’s village can still speak Georgian. They even still have an Adjarian accent.
I am Gurji, I am Georgian
Naira and Nora had many things in common - loneliness was just one of them. Another was time to spare. At 77 and 87 respectively, the two women did not have much to do in Kutaisi, Georgia’s third-largest city, and, since their children had left for Greece and Russia in search of work, they were left without anyone to care for. Then in 2010 Naira Meskhia and Nora Vashakmadze met in Kutaisi’s Social Center for Elderly. Founded in 2004 by Red Cross Georgia, the facility serves as a community center for older people, organizing activities and courses, including on computer literacy* - and the energetic friends got quickly into it. There, the two energetic women resurrected their mutual love for singing and set up an ensemble that regularly performs at the center. It was wonderful until it lasted. Nora has not been performing since February 2017 as she joined her daughter in Greece. Yet, those computer skills came in handy and technology has kept their friendship flowing. Today photos of their daily lives are shared via Facebook and Viber, while Skype has proved to be a creative tool to sing together. * In 2016, Red Cross Georgia started a computer literacy program at the Social Center for Elderly with the support of the National Assistance Foundation and McLain Association for Children.
Naira and Nora: Old Friendship, New Technology
The film is dedicated to the tragedy of June 13. All interviewees are volunteers who have been involved in the cleanup of the damaged city and finding the missing people.
Generation 13
A growing number of people are rejecting traditional office life and embracing the freedom to work from anywhere.
Digital nomads
More than 250,000 people are refuges after the war in Abkhazia in 1992-1993. People who were forced to leave their homes 23 years ago have no contact with the people who are living in Abkhazia know. It is an experimental video, in which refuges are trying to speak with Abkhazia residents by drafting written letters.
Letters
Although it is only one square meter, it is still the most urban space in the city. For her experimental video, Keti Gigashvili spends a day in the lift of one of the block houses in Tbilisi to meet and talk to inhabitants.
One Square Meter
The film is dedicated to the tragedy of June 13. All interviewees are volunteers who have been involved in the cleanup of the damaged city and finding the missing people.
Generation 13
Keti Gigashvili continues her video series, 'Letters,' where she asks IDPs from Abkhazia to write a letter to their Abkhazian friends or neighbours whom they have not seen for 23 years. More than 250,000 people were forced to leave their homes in Abkhazia in 1992-1993.
Letters
The characters of this short documentary film are in search of their sons who were lost during the Abkhazian war, 24 years ago. Soon after the war ended, the parents who lost their children, united together in one organisation (Department of Searching the Missing Soldiers for Territorial Integrity of Georgia and Protection of Their Family Members). They manage the reburial process themselves. Some members of the organization have already found the graves of their sons, but they continue to work and help other parents. The organisation mentioned in the film as “Red Cross” refers to "Georgia Red Cross Society"
Parents
Leila, Esma and Zurab have been teaching Abkhazian for 17 years. Both ethnic Abkhazians, Leila and Esma, found themselves on the other side of the river Enguri after the war. Zurab connected them with each other. “Lessons of Abkhazian Language” is a challenge for teachers as well as students. Each one of them has their own motivation to overcome this challenge.
Lessons of Abkhazian Language
Taxi drivers are a common sight in the South Caucasus - shiny European cars flutter alongside aged vehicles of Soviet memory. At the steering wheel, men, and rarely, women provide a ride and more often than not, a chat that matters. Chai Khana explores the life on the road of three taxi drivers in Tbilisi, Yerevan, and Sukhum. For the subtitles, please click CC in the youtube window.
On A Taxi Across the South Caucasus
Naira and Nora had many things in common - loneliness was just one of them. Another was time to spare. At 77 and 87 respectively, the two women did not have much to do in Kutaisi, Georgia’s third largest city, and, since their children had left for Greece and Russia in search of work, they were left without anyone to care for.
Naira and Nora: Old Friendship, New Technology
For 22 years Valeri Malazonia has worked as a bus driver on the route from Tbilisi to Athens. Over the years, many of his passengers have been Georgian women going to Greece to find work. Many never return to their native country. Nearly every day since the service started in the 1990s, the bus heads out from Ortachala Station full of people ready to leave the country. People at the station say goodbye to their family members, who are embarking on a quest for a new life. While the passengers on the bus are different and their stories are unique, the purpose for their journey is always the same: to work in Greece and support their families in Georgia.
From Tbilisi to Athens
Luka Pamba awaits with excitement his after-school evening classes. Twice a week the 14-year-old joins similarly thrilled students between seven and 70 years of age, to learn his ancestral language — Abkhaz. The course started in January 2017 and is the only one of its kind in the area of Feria, a remote village, which is part of the wider Adjara region in Southwestern Georgia.
The lesser known Abkhaz
Just one house exists in the memories of those forced to leave Sokhumi – their own home.In their conversations, they try to remember every detail -- from wooden staircases and tangerine gardens to the very color of an entrance door. Some 25 years have passed since these Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) left Abkhazia, but their memories still contain the color, smell, sound and feeling of the city in which they once lived. Their second home is in Tbilisi, in a block house for IDPs. The reason for this dual existence is the 1992-93 conflict in Abkhazia, which displaced tens of thousands of people. All these individuals can do now to appease their nostalgia and see their old homes again is to cross the administrative border virtually, via online satellite footage. But a virtual tour is quite a challenge for the elderly; as it is for all who try to recognize their personal space in grainy satellite shots. Keti Gigashvili is the author of an experimental video series about IDPs from Abkhazia writing letters to their former Abkhaz neighbors and friends.
My House from Above
As a result of mining activities a rural part of Chiatura looks like a battlefield.