+ Q+A afterwards with the director Salomé Jashi
Three important German film festivals are guests in Brussels every year: the Berlinale Forum, DOK Leipzig and Duisburger Filmwoche. From this year's Berlinale Forum programme we present, among others, Taming the Garden by Salomé Jashi. Following the screening, the director will be available for a film discussion with Cristina Nord, director of Berlinale Forum.
About the film: Taming the Garden
(Switzerland / Germany / Georgia, 2021, Georgian, Mingrelian, subtitled: English, 91’)
An old tree with a magnificent crown floats across the sea. What sounds like a surrealist painting is one of the most captivating images in Salomé Jashi’s Taming the Garden. Captivating and ambivalent in equal measure, because transporting the tree forms part of a ludicrous project. An extremely wealthy and politically powerful man collects old trees, which he has dug out and brought to his garden. There is controversial discussion among those watching about why he does it and what they should make of it. Simply because he can afford such an eccentric hobby perhaps? As absurd as the transplanting of the trees appears, it is very much a sign of power, unabashed wealth and the conquest of nature. The viewer can clearly see and hear what it takes to uproot a tree. The trees are grasped with heavy equipment, roads into the mountains have to be built to enable the transport and young trees are felled along the way. The creaking of wood and the sound of metal merge with birdsong. The camera finds great beauty in all of this – in the old trees as well as in the rusty spots on the transport vehicles, and even in the artificially irrigated, eclectic theme park. (Anna Hoffmann)
About the director: Salomé Jashi
Born in 1981 in Tbilisi, Georgia. After studying journalism, she completed a degree in documentary film. Taming the Garden is her second feature-length film following her award-winning debut The Dazzling Light of Sunset (2016).
“PERSPEKTIVEN – Berlinale Forum, DOK Leipzig, Duisburger Filmwoche“ is an initiative by Goethe-Institut Brussels and BOZAR Films, programmed with Le p'tit ciné asbl, in cooperation with the Berlinale Forum, Arsenal – Institute for Film und Video Art, DOK Leipzig and Duisburger Filmwoche. The series is kindly supported by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe.
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