Cinema
ხაბარდა
Mikheil Chiaureli · 1931
Synopsis
In Tbilisi in the early Soviet years, the city's communist organisations decide to raze the crumbling old town to build workers' housing. When they attack a church in the suburbs, churchmen, notables and defenders of monuments rise up to save it, and the city divides over what it wants to keep.
Context
The screenplay is written with Sergei Tretyakov, a playwright of the Left Front of the Arts and close to Meyerhold, and the cinematography is by Anton Polikevich, who had lit Kote Mikaberidze's satire two years earlier. Mikheil Gelovani, who would become in the forties the official performer of the role of Stalin, is in the cast. The film was immediately criticised for what was judged disrespectful of Georgian culture. The Russian title, more explicit than the Georgian, means here the stones fall.
Who it is for
Sixty-one minutes of silent film, Georgian intertitles, freely available online. One should know that khabarda is a warning cry, something like “watch out”.
Prizes and reception
One of the Georgian silent films that the major retrospectives programme, but whose standing remains diminished by what its director became under Stalin.