This documentary presents the history of twentieth-century Georgian literature through analysis not only of literary texts but also of previously unknown or lesser-known archival materials. Leading Georgian scholars discuss newly uncovered details concerning the constraints and violations of Georgian writers’ intellectual and personal freedom – details that enable a fresh understanding and reinterpretation of Georgian literature. Against the background of specific political, social, and cultural strategies, the film offers an academic overview of one of the most complex and contradictory centuries in Georgian literary history.
The film covers six key periods in the history of Georgian literature:
● The era of Georgian Modernism (the Blue Horns and the Tbilisi avant-garde)
● Galaktion Tabidze at the crossroads of epochs
● “Flourishing Bolshevism” and Georgian literature
● From the “Great Patriotic War” to the “Khrushchev Thaw” (From the cannons to the Twist)
● The period of stagnation and the end of the Soviet regime
● The post-Soviet era and the formation of postmodernism