Motionless Pictures of Soviet Georgian Cinema: The Life and Work of Georgian Painters in the 1920s and 1930s
Supervisor: Dr Maria Mileeva
Advisor: Dr Klara Kemp-Welch
Funded by AHRC/CHASE
My doctoral thesis examines the emergence of cinematic art in Georgia and provides the first known study of Georgian film painters. Kinomkhatvari (‘a film painter’) is a Georgian syntagm for two professions – a production designer in cinema and a painter. Lacking an equivalent in English, this concept has the ability to rethink the role of the artist in film.
The main argument of my research is that cinema offered new artistic opportunities to artists facing censorship in the Soviet era. While the predominant form was socialist realism, ‘film painters’ in Soviet Georgian cinema could work with a forbidden aesthetic, as their cinematic work on screen was inevitably reshaped by the director or cinematographer.
Storyboard sketches, costumes and cinematic paintings by these artists have so far remained hidden in archives and will form the main research sources for this inquiry.
Education
PhD History of Art, Courtauld Institute of Art (2024 – present)
MA Sociology, Tbilisi State University
BA Political Sciences, Tbilisi State University
Papers/Monographs
Monograph – The Life and Death of Municipal Cinemas in the Big Cities of Georgia, Tbilisi: Samshoblo, 2024 – co-authored with Prof. David Andriadze
Article – ‘A Brief History of Municipal Cinemas in Georgia’, Third Text, awaiting publication
Article – ‘Mekas’s Shoes’, Cinexpress, Tbilisi, 2022
Translation/Book – Robert Stam, Film Theory: An Introduction, Tbilisi State University Press, 2020
Article – ‘Vertically Moving Camera’, FilmPrint, Tbilisi, 2015
Teaching
Tbilisi State University-Research Assistant/Lecturer in Sociology of Art – 2017-2023
Grants/Awards
AHRC/CHASE Doctoral Training Partnership – 2024
Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation of Georgia – Socio-cultural Analysis of Film Documentaries and Archived Chronicles of Soviet-Georgian Public Broadcasting: From its Foundation to 1991, 2023-Present
Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation of Georgia – The Life and Death of Municipal Cinemas in the Big Cities of Georgia, 2021-2023
Research Interests
Film Theory
Avant-Garde Cinema/Cinéma vérité
Documentary and Archival Footage
Visual Sociology
Soviet Cinema/Propaganda/Politics
