Friends! This coming Monday (March 23), we will be screening a documentary about the Zapatista Revolution of 1994 titled "A Place Called Chiapas". In addition, this day marks the birthday of Rita Shmurtz @schmurz__ , the organizer of the film screening. After the movie, there will be a small vegan feast; if you’d like, you can bring something to share (you definitely don’t need to bring anything else)! About the film: On January 1, 1994, the Zapatista National Liberation Army, composed of poor indigenous people from the state of Chiapas, seized five towns and 500 ranches in southern Mexico. The Mexican government sent troops into the area. Fighting to restore indigenous peoples’ control over their lives and land, the Zapatista Army—led by the charismatic guerrilla leader and poet Subcomandante Marcos—began broadcasting its message to the world via the Internet. The result was what The New York Times called “the world’s first postmodern revolution.” Canadian director Netty Wild traveled to the tropical canyons of southern Mexico to capture the elusive reality of this uprising. Her camera effectively and poignantly captures the human dimension of this symbolic war, telling the complex story of indigenous peoples’ struggle for their rights. March 23 Doors: 7:00 PM Screening: 8:00 PM

Hello, dear friends! 🙏 This Friday we’re hosting a screening of short films by current and former residents of the Ortachala Art Residency. There are three films in total — all of them were made during our studies at film schools. These are very personal and important projects for us. We’ve worked on them for a long time, and some of them will be screened for the first time. Come by, we’d love to see you! 📍Ortachala, 89 🕒16.01, 19:00 "As trees fall they look up" by Maxim Mirra Rita organizes a search for her missing friend Lera. As volunteers search through the night, Rita grows closer to one of them and begins to notice increasingly disturbing traits in him. "In a white room" by Valeriia Podbeltseva Platon spent the whole winter in an abandoned house. In the spring, he went outside with a small video camera in his hands. "Pathologic" by Arsen Sarkisyan Time after time, the three of them wake up in a homeless world. Each of them goes his own way, but he always comes to the same place. Is there a way out?

Starting april 1, one room will be available in our art residence. It’s a house where artists and other passionate, creative people live and work. If you’d like to join our community, feel free to message us! Price for room: 650 GEL + utilities (around 75 GEL, no deposit) Location: Ortachala 🍀 С 1 апреля в нашей арт-резиденции освобождается комната. Это дом, где живут и творят художники и просто увлечённые и творческие люди. Если вам хочется присоединиться к нашему сообществу, напишите нам! Цена: 650 лари+к/у (~75 лари), без залога Район: Ортачала 🍀

Saint Petersburg Evening 🗓 Sunday, December 7 ⏰ 19:00 📌 Ortachala Art Residency (Ortachala 89) And there was a city. The most beautiful city in the world. With a huge grey river hanging above its deep bed like a huge grey sky above itself. Along the river stood magnificent palaces with such exquisitely beautiful façades that, if a boy stood on the right bank, the left looked like the imprint of a gigantic mollusc called civilization. Which had ceased to exist. J. Brodsky, Less Than One, 1976 Dear friends! We’ve long wanted to organize an evening of nostalgia for Petersburg – the most beautiful and beloved city on Earth. This Sunday we’d like to gather to read texts about this wonderful city, watch videos, and listen to music. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve lived there all your life or have never been there at all – come if you’d like to touch this city and its culture. Please remember your favorite story connected with this city and bring it with you on Sunday. We’ll share these stories with one another. Also, if you have any materials related to this city that you’d like to share with others, send them to us, and we’ll go through them together that evening!

Our art residency is opening one room from December 1. It’s a shared home for artists, dreamers, and makers — a place to live, create, and collaborate. Reach out if that sounds like you.

Friends! This week our film club will meet on Friday. Continuing the religious theme, we will be watching Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev. It will be interesting to compare the European perspective on faith and divine presence explored by Pasolini in The Gospel According to Matthew with the same motif set in medieval Rus’, as interpreted by Tarkovsky, and to see how different their tonalities are. It feels wrong to write too much about this film, so instead we offer a biblical quote from the First Epistle to the Corinthians: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.” November 28, Friday, 19:00 Ortacahala Art Residency Admission is free.

An Evening of Tengiz Abuladze 🗓 November 23, Sunday ⏰ 19:00 📌 Ortachala Art Residency Admission: free/donation Language: Russian For the second meeting of the Georgian Club, we want to focus on the work of film director Tengiz Abuladze. He is best known for his film trilogy “The Plea – The Tree of Desire – Repentance.” All of his works are marked by a blend of universal philosophical themes and Georgian national motifs. In Abuladze’s films, one can also see the recurring images of a woman who perishes yet achieves moral victory, and the motif of the road as a symbol of the path toward awareness. This Sunday, we will watch two films. The first, The Plea, is an adaptation of texts by Vazha-Pshavela, which we read last Sunday. The second, The Tree of Desire, is a film based on short stories by Giorgi Leonidze about pre-revolutionary life in a Georgian village.

Hey everyone! This Saturday at the Ortachala Film Club we’d like to watch The Gospel According to Matthew by Pier Paolo Pasolini. During our Georgian evening last Sunday, we touched on the theme of gospel readings (our friends are currently holding similar readings), and the idea came up to watch precisely this adaptation. For Pasolini—and for Italian Neorealism in general—it is characteristic to use documentary-like techniques that bring what’s happening closer to reality. Most of the roles were played not by professional actors but by ordinary residents of the Sicilian town where the film was shot. Pasolini’s mother played the elderly Virgin Mary. The camera often shows the scene through the movement of a crowd or from within it, making the viewer almost a direct participant in the biblical events. After the screening, we can discuss what we’ve seen over tea by the fireplace. Come join us! November 22, Saturday, 19:00 Ortachala Art Residency Free entry

An Evening of Vazha-Pshavela 🗓 November 16, Sunday ⏰ 19:00 📌 Ortachala Art Residency Entrance: free/donation Language: Russian Dear friends, we invite you to immerse yourselves with us in the world of Georgian culture. Every Sunday we will explore some of the finest works of Georgian literature, music, and cinema. Our first meeting is dedicated to the work of the great poet and thinker Vazha-Pshavela. This Georgian thinker developed a radically critical attitude toward traditional, clan-based values, often cloaked in religiosity and sanctity. The philosophical poems of Vazha-Pshavela share a common theme: a person must be born a second time — through an experience of truth, beauty, and dignity. Yet this is not easy, for anyone striving for such rebirth inevitably clashes with members of their own society, who see in them a threat to the values that ground their identity. One element of this identity may be the image of an enemy: the presence of an enemy and the story of the struggle against him act as a powerful unifying force for a community. The enemy is seen as less human, less beloved by God — if beloved at all. Vazha-Pshavela was a true mystic, yearning to experience the presence of God within himself. But this mysticism had great social significance for him, because he wanted the divine grace flowing from his poems and stories to irrigate the dryness and emptiness of social life, to heal its evil and its sickness. During our upcoming Sunday gathering, we plan to read aloud together Vazha-Pshavela’s poems Aluda Ketelauri and Host and Guest, and afterward watch Tengiz Abuladze’s film The Plea. This film is an adaptation of Vazha-Pshavela’s world, combining motifs from several of his poems. We have also invited several of our Georgian friends. They will read excerpts in Georgian so we can hear the beauty of the language in its original form. Come join us — it will be fascinating!

Dear Georgian friends — and everyone else! This Saturday at the Ortachala Film Club we’ll be watching Pirosmani, directed by Giorgi Shengelaia, a film about the life of the great Georgian painter. In the coming weeks, we’ll be hosting a Georgian Culture Club with readings of Vazha-Pshavela, screenings of films by Abuladze, and more — so we’d like to start with a collective introduction to Georgian art and culture. Shengelaia’s film is deeply painterly — each frame is composed like a canvas. The entire movie unfolds as a series of static tableaux, reflecting the everyday scenes and themes characteristic of the artist’s work. The story of Pirosmani is inspiring in its authenticity, freedom, and strength of spirit. Despite poverty and lack of recognition, he remained true to himself throughout his life. Come join us — we’ll be happy to see you! 📅 November 15, Saturday, 19:00 📍 Ortachala art residency 🎟️ Free admission

Friends! We invite you to Ortachala for a Samhain film screening of Enter the Void. We’ve decided to launch a weekly film club at our art residence and to begin with Gaspar Noé’s debut film — as a symbolic passage (or entrance) from summer to winter, from the real to the dreamlike, from one bardo to another, from one rebirth to the next — after all, it’s Samhain. This film, inspired by The Tibetan Book of the Dead, uses a strange, psychedelic cinematic language to show the journey of a soul through the afterlife. It seems like a perfect occasion to sit by the fireplace, read a few fragments from The Tibetan Book of the Dead if we wish, and share stories of strange or mystical experiences — of dream journeys, encounters with death, illusions, or rebirths — in short, everything we love about Halloween. October 30, Thursday, 21:00 Ortacahala Art Residence Free entry

Our art residency is opening one room from November 3. It’s a shared home for artists, dreamers, and makers — a place to live, create, and collaborate. Reach out if that sounds like you.