In honour of the late, great Rezo Gabriadze, Stage Russia and Pushkin House present an online screening of Rezo, a biographical animated film about the Georgian screenwriter, artist and puppeteer.
You’ll be able to watch the film from 13th-18th July via a Vimeo link, but make sure to join us on Zoom at 6pm on Wednesday 14th July to watch a live Q&A with director Leo Gabriadze, Rezo’s son and director of the film, in conversation with Professor Michael Earley.
Rezo Gabriadze gained international acclaim as a screenwriter of the classic Soviet classic films: “Don’t Grieve”, “Mimino”, and “Kin-Dza-Dza”. In all, he has written over 35 screenplays. Frustrated with the lack of intellectual freedom during the Soviet era, he turned to puppet theater as a surreptitious way of telling his dramatic stories. In 1981 he founded The Gabriadze Theater – a marionette drama theatre in the old town of Tbilisi. As a painter and graphic artist, Gabriadze has contributed to over 50 books. His works of art can be seen in numerous museums and his iconic sculptures “Chizhik-Pizik”, and “Major Kovalyov’s Nose” in St. Petersburg have become major attractions. In October 2012, Moscow’s Pushkin Fine Arts Museum presented its first major one-man show of Gabriadze’s paintings, drawings and sculptures. Among his many international awards is the “Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters of the French Republic”.
In Rezo, Leo Gabriadze, who previously made the hit horror film Unfriended (2014), leaves it to his father to talk about a life suffused with magical thinking. The movie is an autobiographical animated documentary questioning ideas of deep humanity, kindness and survival during the uneasy times after the 2nd World War.
75 minutes, in Russian with English subtitles
Awards
Special Jury Mention – Go East Festival
Georgian Critics Award – Cinedoc Festival
Best European Independent Documentary Film Award at ÉCU 2018
Best Screenplay and Best Feature Open Russian Festival of Animated Film
Best Animated Movie Asia Pacific Screen Awards
"A great way to plunge into the river of time and geography." - Film.ru
"A cinematic exploration reminiscent of American Splendor." - Hollywood SOAPBOX
"Charmingly personal...Teems with eccentric details." - NY Times
Leo Gabriadze is a Russian-based movie and commercial director. Since 1995, he has been working at Timur Bekmambetov's production company Bazelevs where he has made more than 100 commercials, many of them award-winning. In 2011 he made his first feature movie Lucky Trouble, and in 2013 he made the horror film Unfriended, with a box office of more than $75 million. Rezo, a labor of love, is his first animated documentary.
Michael Earley is Academic Adviser for Stage Russia. He is writing a new book about the relationship between Russian theatre directors and revolutionary innovators Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vsevolod Meyerhold. Currently, Michael is Dean of Performing Arts and Professor of Drama and Theatre at LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore. He was previously Professor of Drama, Principal and Chief Executive Officer of Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance in Sidcup. An American by birth, Michael had an extensive career in the United States where he was Assistant Professor and Director of the undergraduate Theatre Studies Program at Yale University and on the faculty of the Drama Department at the Juilliard School and also at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. As Chief Producer of Plays for BBC Radio Drama he directed over 50 productions for broadcast over Radio 3 and Radio 4.