SCREENING
Limitation
Sunday, Mar 17, 2024 at 4:45 pm
Location: Bartos Screening Room
Part of First Look 2024
With directors Elene Asatiani, Soso Dumbadze (Limitation), and Todd Chandler (Threat Assessment) in person
Dir. Elene Asatiani, Soso Dumbadze. Georgia. 2023, 125 mins. DCP. In Georgian with English subtitles. In December 1991, a paramilitary coalition led by former members of Georgia’s Soviet military and political elite launched a bloody coup d’état against the government of Zviad Gamsakhurdia, the nation’s first democratically elected president. Long suppressed by the postwar regime, Russia’s covert involvement in inciting and supporting the coup is now widely acknowledged by historians. Gathering primary footage sourced entirely from the internet, Georgian experimental filmmaker Dumbadze joins with seasoned editor Asatiani to construct an archival horror film, a riveting account of an authoritarian uprising as depicted by the official cameramen of both sides. Adopting a terse mode evocative of the recent found–footage work of Sergei Loznitsa, and forgoing contextual titles, narration, or interviews, Asatiani and Dumbadze allow the fateful concatenation of events to unspool one raw, precipitous episode at a time. North American premiere
Preceded by:
Threat Assessment
Dir. Todd Chandler. 2023, 5 mins. U.S. At a convention addressing gun violence in schools, filmmaker Todd Chandler (Bulletproof) trains his camera on a curious, and possibly telling, tendency among the law enforcers and administrators in attendance. Festival premiere
Tickets: $15 / $11 senior and students / $9 youth (ages 3–17) / discounted for MoMI members ($7–$11). There is a $1.50 transaction fee per ticket for all online purchases. The cost of admission may be applied toward a same-day purchase of a membership.
Order tickets. Please pick up tickets at the Museum’s admissions desk upon arrival. All seating is general admission.
About the filmmakers:
Elene Asatiani is a visual storyteller, independent documentary filmmaker, and editor. Films she edited premiered and featured at various international film festivals, such as IDFA, Sundance, Cottbus, and Tribeca, and have won various prizes such as Best International Film, Best Documentary etc. She directed and edited these feature and documentary films Brighton 4th (2021), Their Valley (2021), Dead Souls’ Vacation (2020), Golden Thread (2019), Gogita’s New Life (2016), Jara (2016), The Way (2015). Soso Dumbadze graduated the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. He was awarded a PhD by the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg. Dumbadze is a professor at the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs. His works were presented at the Bundeskunsthalle, Art Cologne, and others. Dumbadze’s diploma film Sunny Night (2017, co-director Lea Hartlaub) premiered at the Dok-Leipzig Festival. In 2006 Dumbadze founded Sa.Ga. Publishing for Society.
Todd Chandler is a filmmaker and artist whose work explores American rituals, landscapes, and systems of power. His most recent documentary, Bulletproof, screened at over two dozen festivals worldwide, and was called “dreamlike and startling,” by the New York Times and “a quiet gut punch of a film,” by The Guardian. He has received fellowships from the Sundance Institute and Creative Capital, and is a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow. He is currently a faculty member at Temple University’s Film and Media Arts program