Let us flow ვიდინოთ

For me the Tush people stand out for their dedication to their traditional way of life which is influenced by extreme weather conditions as much as by the symbolic order: Gods are cherished and respected, while the Tush language reflects their struggle for survival. Here, life has remained largely unchanged since medieval times until few years ago, when the government introduced free wifi access in the villages, where previously one had to walk for 10 km to make a phone call. The desires of the young Tushetians are shifting rapidly, and nowhere else is the conflict of desires more pronounced than during the annual celebration ‘Atengenoba’, with young Tushetians looking more and more like young people anywhere else, ditching their traditional dress for Normcore.

I am interested in linguistic parallels between Tushetian quotidian and filmmaking jargon, between hunting and shooting: Tushetians believe that odd years are governed by Goddess Dali and even years are St George’s years. My film follows this structure as its two parts are shot in 2021 and 2022 respectively: there is more distance in the second part, it was more difficult to shoot (‘to hunt’) as a woman filmmaker.

As the film progresses it becomes a film about distance: the twenty meter distance the Tushetian women have to observe from their shrines, the distance between me and my protagonists, between languages and translation.

Filmmakers constantly talk about distance, it permeates filmmaking language: we say ‘depth of field’ and ‘focusing distance’, we are careful not to film too close, we say the lens is ‘breathing’ when the focus shifts slightly- filmmakers normally edit this out. I leave those instances in my film in order to designate another body – my body, and by extension, the viewer’s body. In my films the moments of uncertainty and fragility are extended rather than edited out.