Next in Sundance 2013’s World Cinema Documentary Competition: From Georgia/Germany, THE MACHINE WHICH MAKES EVERYTHING DISAPPEAR, in which director Tinatin Gurchiani offers a glimpse at contemporary Georgian life inspired by audition interviews.
Sundance Program Description:
The story begins with an experiment. A filmmaker in the country of Georgia posts an ad inviting youth to audition for her film. Facing the camera, the hopefuls confess their struggles and dreams. These raw interviews unfold seamlessly into cinematic slivers of Georgian life. A teenager awaits news of his father’s surgery. A girl anticipates her wedding. The governor of a tiny village faces a monumental decision. A soldier attempts to link his imprisoned brother to the world outside, and a young woman confronts the mother who abandoned her. These threads form a fluid Altman-esque collage of characters—and a nation—teetering on the brink of change. It’s a world where tradition and modernity subtly intermingle: singing traditional ballads is as common a self-expression as listening to hip-hop or playing online poker.
Mixing metanarrative with heightened visual aesthetics, THE MACHINE WHICH MAKES EVERYTHING DISAPPEAR intuitively penetrates individual lives to conjure a richly layered, indelible portrait of a society, brilliantly becoming more than the sum of its parts.
Some Background:
Gurchiani comes from a background as a psychologist and photographer. She made a number of short films as part of her training in Germany’s Konrad Wolff Film and Television Academy. This is her first feature-length documentary, which made its world premiere this past November at IDFA, where it was nominated as one of the three finalists for the First Appearance jury prize.
Why You Should Watch:
The contrast between the two sides of Gurchiani’s curious project – the mannered, deliberate interviews and the lush, freer-flowing verité segments – create a frission that candidly reveals Gurchiani’s homeland – or at least one view channeled through a multiplicity of subjects.
More Info:
View the film’s trailer. For more information, check out the film’s Facebook page and its page on its international distributor’s website. For Gurchiani’s thoughts on the film, check out her Indiewire interview. For screening dates and times at Sundance, click the link in the first paragraph.
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