The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear

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Aug 02 - Aug 08, 2013

(Tinatin Gurchiani, Georgia, 2012, Blu-ray, 101 min)

U.S. premiere!

A Georgian director wants to make a film about growing up in her home country, and puts out a casting call for young adults, aged 15 to 23. She travels through cities and villages interviewing the candidates who responded and filming their daily lives, looking for commonalities across social and ethnic lines.

The boys and girls who respond to the call are radically different from one another, as are their personal reasons for auditioning. Some want to be movie stars and see the film as a means to that end; others want to tell their personal story. One girl wants to call to account the mother who abandoned her; one boy wants to share the experience of caring for his handicapped family members; another wants to clear the name of a brother, currently serving a jail sentence.

Together, their tales weave a kaleidoscopic tapestry of war and love, wealth and poverty, creating an extraordinarily complex vision of a modern society that still echoes with its Soviet past.

"this is good tourism: a tourism with no spectacles, no attractions, no monuments, no starchitecture, no stunning landscapes or magical cityscapes. This is tourism of a country's soul. And this soul, the Georgian soul of our times, has a specific tone, color, and structure of feeling that's been shaped and reshaped by historical developments" —The Stranger

"a sliver of real life in small-town Georgia in the former USSR. . . a precise if low-key look at a corner of the world where life goes on in timeworn ways despite the realities of digital cameras and Van Damme pictures." —Seattle Weekly

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