Pirosmani

The mythical life of the great Georgian primitivist artist Niko Pirosmani is revealed in Giorgi Shengelaia’s beautifully-shot and sensitive film.

  • Director

    Giorgi Shengelaia

  • With

    Avtandil Varazi, Dodo Abashidze, Zurab Kapianidze, Teimuraz Beridze

  • Soviet Union-Georgia 1969. 85min

  • 35mm

  • Certificate

    U

  • English subtitles

In the time since his death in 1918, the artist Niko Pirosmani has assumed the status of Georgia’s national painter, his distinctive work recognised as being of key importance in the story of early modernist art. But in life Pirosmani lived in poverty, working as a jobbing painter making signs for shops and taverns around Tiblisi, and trading his work for food, drink and a place to sleep. Giorgi Shengelaia’s captivating, beautifully composed film offers a portrait of Pirosmani’s simple, isolated life, rendered in a series of tableaux that take their style and distinctive colour palette from the artist’s own work. It’s among the most tenderly faithful cinematic portraits of an artist’s life. It screens from an ex-BBC transmission print.

James Bell

Access information

The screening on Saturday 14 June 20:30 NFT2 will include a live captioned introduction.

The screening on Saturday 14 June 20:30 NFT2 will be presented with additional Descriptive Subtitles of non-dialogue audio.

Georgian National Film Center