Tengiz Abuladze
Tengiz Abuladze | |
---|---|
Georgia | |
Resting place | Didube Pantheon, Tbilisi |
Years active | 1956–1988 |
Notable work |
|
Title | People's Artist of the USSR (1980) |
Tengiz Abuladze (Georgian: თენგიზ აბულაძე; 31 January 1924 – 6 March 1994) was a Georgian film director, screenwriter, theatre teacher and People's Artist of the USSR.[1][2] He is regarded as one of the best Soviet directors.[3]
Biography
Abuladze studied theatre direction (1943–1946) at the Shota Rustaveli Theatre Institute, Tbilisi,
His first film,
Abuladze came to prominence in the Soviet Union under perestroika when his banned film Repentance, a blistering expose of the Stalinist terror, was released in 1986.
Repentance revolves around the death of an old tyrant, Varlam Aravidze, and the refusal of a woman, Ketevan Barateli, to leave his corpse in peace. She repeatedly disinters the corpse and at the trial disinters also the forbidden secrets of the past. Aravidze is universalised as Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, but most obviously as Stalin's fellow Georgian Lavrentiy Beria.
Film career
Returning to Tbilisi with his fellow Georgian
Abuladze's reputation is, however, based on a trilogy of films that deal with fundamental questions of good and evil, love and hate, life and death. The first of these, The Plea (1968), was inspired by the poems of Vazha-Pshavela and shot in black-and-white against the severe Georgian landscape familiar from other films of the time. The second film in the trilogy, The Wishing Tree (1971), was an epic tale set in the same landscape and focusing on the hopes and reveries of a young woman and a man's search for the mythical tree that will make dreams come true. The Wishing Tree won festival prizes in Moscow, Czechoslovakia and Italy, and was awarded the State Prize of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. From 1974 Abuladze taught at the Rustaveli Institute from which he had graduated three decades earlier.
In 1978 Abuladze joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, a normal career move at that time and in that context. In 1980 he was awarded the title People's Artist of the USSR. By now he was one of the leading Soviet Georgian filmmakers. On the surface, he was the perfect example of the Soviet cultural nomenklatura. Then in 1983–84 he made Repentance, the film (made for Georgian television) that was to catapult him to worldwide attention.
Like so many other films of the "period of stagnation", Repentance was left "on the shelf". So fearful was Abuladze that his film would be destroyed that he is reputed to have kept the only remaining copy under his bed. When Mikhail Gorbachev and glasnost arrived and the old guard in the Soviet filmmakers' union was unanimously ejected in 1986, a Conflict Commission was established to review these shelved films. With encouragement from the then-Soviet Foreign Minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, Repentance was released, first in Georgia and then across the Soviet Union, where it attracted record audiences and became the flagship film of the whole glasnost process.[6]
Filmography
Tengiz Abuladze made 12 films during his career. Five of them were documentaries and seven were fiction. His final film was going to be about Galaktion Tabidze and Ilia Chavchavadze, but it remained unfinished.[7]
Year | English title | Original title | Length | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
1953 | Chveni sasakhle | ჩვენი სასახლე | Unknown | Documentary |
1954 | Qartuli tsekvis sakhelmtsipo ansambli | ქართული ცეკვის სახელმწიფო ანსამბლი | Unknown | Documentary |
1955 | Dimitriy Arakishvili | დიმიტრი არაყიშვილი | Unknown | Documentary |
1955 | Magdana's Donkey | მაგდანას ლურჯა | 63 min | |
1958 | Other People's Children | სხვისი შვილები | 77 min | also screenplay writer with Rezo Japaridze |
1962 | Me, Grandma, Iliko and Ilarion |
მე,ბებია,ილიკო და ილარიონი | 92 min | also screenplay writer with Me, Grandma, Iliko and Ilarioni .
|
1955 | Svanur-Tushuri chanakhatebi | სვანური ჩანახატები | Unknown | Documentary |
1967 | The Plea | ვედრება | 72 min | also screenplay writer with Rezo Kveselava and Anzor Salukvadze. Based on the poems of Vazha-Pshavela – Host and Guest and Aluda Ketelauri. |
1971 | A Necklace for My Beloved | სამკაული ჩემი სატრფოსათვის | 70 min | also screenplay writer with Akhmed Abu-Bakar and Tamaz Meliava. Based on a short story of Akhmed Abu-Bakar. |
1972 | Muzeumi gia tsis qvesh | მუზეუმი ღია ცის ქვეშ | Unknown | Documentary |
1976 | The Wishing Tree | ნატვრის ხე | 87 min | also screenplay writer with Revaz Inanishvili |
1984 | Repentance | მონანიება | 153 min | also screenplay writer with Nana Janelidze and Rezo Kveselava |
References
- ISBN 978-1442268425.
- ISBN 978-1838718497.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - ^ "The man behind the USSR's most popular film a parable about tyranny. Director Tengiz Abuladze talks about 'Repentance,' a film shelved until glasnost, but now acclaimed in the USSR and France, and soon to be seen in the US". Christian Science Monitor. 7 August 1987.
- ^ "Festival de Cannes: Repentance". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 19 July 2009.
- ^ "15th Moscow International Film Festival (1987)". MIFF. Archived from the original on 16 January 2013. Retrieved 18 February 2013.
- ^ csmonitor.com
- ^ "გამოფხიზლება მონანიებით". 24saati.ge. Archived from the original on 14 September 2016. Retrieved 6 June 2022.
External links
- Tengiz Abuladze at IMDb
- Tengiz Abuladze, The Dictionary of Georgian National Biography. Retrieved 30 January 2007.