WALTZ ON THE PETSCHORA
Homage
Georgia in the days of the Great Terror: a girl runs away from an orphanage, back to the family home. Her father has been executed, an "enemy of the people", her mother deported. Back "home", an officer of the Cheka has set up his unspeakable shop. In a parallel storyline, the mother writes letters to the daughter from the gulag, where, along with other women, she is sent out on a forced march into the ice. At the centre of Gogoberidze's analysis of totalitarianism lies the encounter between the secret police agent and the girl, which oscillates between attraction and revulsion. The mother's off-screen voice hints at survival – while dancing and music defy the violence of the system.
Georgia in the days of the Great Terror: a girl runs away from an orphanage, back to the family home. Her father has been executed, an "enemy of the people", her mother deported. Back "home", an officer of the Cheka has set up his unspeakable shop. In a parallel storyline, the mother writes letters to the daughter from the gulag, where, along with other women, she is sent out on a forced march into the ice. At the centre of Gogoberidze's analysis of totalitarianism lies the encounter between the secret police agent and the girl, which oscillates between attraction and revulsion. The mother's off-screen voice hints at survival – while dancing and music defy the violence of the system.
