Otar Iosseliani

[Kirkinson]

Otar Iosseliani / ოთარ იოსელიანი (1934-present)



"What you're filming, if you're attentive, will itself suggest how it should be filmed, and then the very environment will enter the screen, with all the dimensions of truth which it brings to your narrative."


FILMOGRAPHY

Akvarel (1958) Cinema Prestige (R0)

Sapovnela (1959) Cinema Prestige (R0)

April / Aprili / Avril (1961) Facets / Blaq Out (R0) Blaq Out (R0/R2) Cinema Prestige (R0)

Cast Iron / Tudzhi / La Fonte (1964) Blaq Out (extra on Lundi matin (R2) Cinema Prestige (R0)

Falling Leaves / Giorgobistve / Listopad / La Chute des feuilles (1966) Facets / Blaq Out (R0) Blaq Out (R0/R2) Cinema Prestige (R0)

An Old Gerogian Song / Dzveli qartuli simghera (1969) Cinema Prestige (R0)

There Once Was a Singing Blackbird / Iko shashvi mgalobeli (1970) Facets / Blaq Out (R0) Blaq Out (R0/R2) Cinema Prestige (R0)

Pastoral / Pastorali (1975) Facets / Blaq Out (R0) Blaq Out (R0/R2) Cinema Prestige (R0)

Sept pièces pour cinéma noir et blanc (1982) Cinema Prestige (R0)

Euzkadi été 1982 (1983) Cinema Prestige (R0)

Favorites of the Moon / Les Favoris de la lune (1984) Blaq Out (R2) Cinema Prestige (R0)

Un petit monastère en Toscane / A Little Monastery in Tuscany (1988) Blaq Out (R2) Cinema Prestige (R0)

And Then There Was Light / Et la lumière fut (1989) Blaq Out (R2) Cinema Prestige (R0)

Chasing Butterflies / La Chasse aux papillons (1992) Blaq Out (R2) Cinema Prestige (R0)

Seule, Georgie / Georgia Alone (1994) Cinema Prestige (R0)

Brigands, Chapter VII / Brigands, chapitre VII (1996) Facets (R1) Blaq Out (R2) Cinema Prestige (R0)

Farewell, Home Sweet Home / Adieu, plancher des vaches! (1999) Kino (R1) Blaq Out (R2) Cinema Prestige (R0)

Monday Morning / Lundi matin (2002) Kino (R1) Blaq Out (R2) Artificial Eye (R2) Cinema Prestige (R0) RusCiCo (R5)

Gardens in Autumn / Jardins en automne (2006) Artificial Eye (R2) Sony (R2) Cinema Prestige (R0)

Chantrapas (2010)


Other Appearances

The Complete Jean Vigo. Artificial Eye (R2). In a video interview, Iosseliani offers his feelings on L'Atalante, one of his very favorite films.

The Son of Gascogne (1995) Fox Lorber (R1). Iosseliani has a cameo as himself in this film by Pascal Aubier.

The Whistling Blackbird (2007). A documentary on Iosseliani by Julie Bertucelli (an assistant on Brigands and director of Since Otar Left) that covers the making of Gardens in Autumn. Included (without subtitles) as an extra on the French release of Gardens. No further distribution so far.



FORUM DISCUSSION

Otar Iosseliani Complete Works

Facets: 4 Films by Otar Iosseliani

The Filmmaking Ethic



WEB RESOURCES

Interviews

"There is no return to anywhere". Interview by Mikhail Lemkhin at Nostalghia.com. 1991.

Interview in French by Pierre-Andre Boutang and Martine Marignac. Google translated version. Circa 1995.

Otar Iosseliani le dernier individualiste. Michelle Levieux in l'Humanité. Google translated version. 1997.

To a Stork, What Fools Humans Be. Robert Hilferty in the New York Times. 2001.

"Il cinema è sogno, il sogno del viaggio": incontro con Otar Iosseliani. Italian interview by Francesco Ruggeri. Google translated version. 2002.

Iosseliani dénonce la situation du cinéma en France. "Iosseliani denounces the situation of cinema in France." Google translated version. 2005.

Conflict blamed on both presidents, West. Iosseliani comments on the Russia-Georgia War. AFP, 2008.

La rabbia di Iosseliani: Una guerra assurda. Complete article from which the above comments were quoted. Google translated version. 2008.


Selected Criticism

Desperate Measures. Review of Brigands, Chapter VII by Jonathan Rosenbaum. Chicago Reader, 1998.

Shouts and Murmurs. Review of Monday Morning by Jonathan Rosenbaum. Chicago Reader, 2003.

The Man Who Loved Birds: Otar Iosseliani's Cinema of Kindness. By Quintín. CinemaScope, 2008.


Other

Otar Iosseliani. A short biography by Susan Doll at Facets' web site.

The Actor and the Secret. An interview with Michel Piccoli in which he discusses working with Iosseliani. From Cahiers du cinema.



PRINT MATERIAL

Et le cinema d'otar iosseliani fut. Antony Fiant. French. Age d'homme, 2002.

"Georgia on My Mind." Phillip Lopate. Film Comment, Vol. 41/No. 1. Jan/Feb 2005.

[Knappen]

Thanks for this very good presentation.

I constantly find myself thinking I'm seeing Otar when I spot an elderly gentleman with moustache and sixpence loitering here in Paris.

[Kirkinson]

Iosseliani has a new film debuting at Cannes in a few weeks (as a "special screening") called Chantrapas. The title appears to be a Russian word based on a French phrase ("ne chantera pas") which would be appropriate in light of what (superficially) sounds like a rather autobiographical plot:

Nicolas is an artist, a filmmaker who merely wants to express himself and whom everyone wishes to reduce to silence. When he first starts out in Georgia, the “ideologists” hope to gag him, concerned that his work does not follow the set rules. In the face of their determination, Nicolas leaves his homeland for France - the land of freedom and democracy. But the “state of grace” will not last long.

One important question remains: how does the mermaid fit in?

[Knappen]

Fantastic news. What happened to La Femme est venu pour tromper son mari?

[Kirkinson]

Chantrapas will be screening at the University of Chicago on February 11, with Otar Iosseliani in attendance. The event description says he is currently shooting a new film, but I can't find any information about this, or indeed any mention of it at all, elsewhere on the internet.

[Stefan Andersson]

Carlotta Films, France, announces an Ioseliani box:

La Chute des feuilles
Il etait une fois un merle chanteur
Pastorale
Les Favoris de la lune
Et la lumiere fut
La Chasse aux papillons
Seule, Georgie
Brigands, chapitre VII
Adieu, plancher des vaches
Lundi matin
Jardins en automne
Chantrapas
Chant d'hiver

Bonus :
Courts-métrages du réalisateur
Entretien avec le réalisateur
Documentaire
Livret de 216 pages

Source: https://www.dvdclassik.com/forum/viewto ... start=9015 - post Sept. 12, 2024 by Jack Carter.

Box not up on Carlotta´s website, nor on Amazon.fr.

English subs according to this essential site: https://www.dvdfr.com/dvd/f172260-otar- ... tocomplete

[MichaelB]

Ooh, very tempted by this! I've only seen Chantrapas with Russian and Georgian subtitles, so I could only follow the French-speaking parts.

[pistolwink]

It's on Amazon.fr now, for a very decent price.

[MichaelB]

I can't find it.

[tenia]

You can follow the link on DVD FR page : https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B0DGW58C7F/

[MichaelB]

Odd that you can't get to it via the Amazon search engine, but nothing about that website surprises me any more.

But it is indeed a very decent price - roughly €100 for nine discs.

[tenia]

Pretty much all Amazon search engines went rubbish some years ago, though the FR store one probably still is the best one. The UK one, though it has improved recently, is the most awful to go through for me, it's almost as if typing a title will lead you to all the products NOT being what you searched for. I pretty much can't find anything on it without going by a site like blu-ray.com and then following the link it offers.

[mrb404]

The details (and preorder) of the boxset are up on Carlotta's website: 21 films on 9 BRs.

[MichaelB]

Excellent - I was hoping they'd include Un petit monastère en Toscane, which if I recall correctly (although I haven't seen it since 1988) has no spoken content at all, or at least none that matters.

[Stefan Andersson]

Un petit monastère en Toscane is available to view, free of charge, along with other Iosseliani shorts, at:
https://www.cinematheque.fr/henri/ - see heading Otar Iosseliani

[swo17]

As a reminder, the set came out this week. I think FNAC might be the most affordable option? €94.52 shipped to the U.S.

[criterionsnob]

I received mine yesterday from FNAC. Beautiful packaging, but I haven't watched any discs yet. Hopefully this weekend.

[criterionsnob]

I'm entirely new to Iosseliani and have been meaning to seek out his work for a few decades. What a way to do so with this box set. I've only just started with the first three shorts on the first disc, but so far these are wonderful transfers with nice film grain. I'm looking forward to getting into his feature and documentary work, but if I'm already this charmed by his short films, I'm ready to call this the box set of the year.

I was worried for a second when no English subtitles appeared on the second short, but after the narration, the subtitles explain that it was imposed by the censors, and therefore they're not translating it.

[pistolwink]

Iosseliani approved subtitles for his Georgian/Soviet films and preferred that they be minimally subtitled.

[criterionsnob]

Makes sense. It's already apparent from the first few shorts that he's a very visual filmmaker. Tati seems like a good reference. Avril is mostly dialogue free, but when the characters have a more lengthy conversation, it's not subtitled and it doesn't even matter. I'm going to watch a few more of the films this weekend. Very exciting purchase.

[MichaelB]

The most deliberately minimalist subtitling I've ever encountered was in Straub/Huillet's Class Relations, where Danièle Huillet explicitly asked for the subs to provide only the most basic orientation. My German hasn't had that kind of workout since I sat the O-level exam in 1983!

Other famous examples: Roman Polanski asked for some dialogue near the start of Knife in the Water not to be subtitled, as the dialogue in question had been imposed on the film by censors against his wishes, while Josef von Sternberg and John Boorman actively did not want The Saga of Anatahan or Hell in the Pacific to be subtitled, the latter because the whole point was that Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune couldn't understand each other, and so the audience shouldn't be able to either (unless they already understood both English and Japanese, but he couldn't help that).

[tenia]

I don't recall on which movie, but there also are some lines translated in the English subtitles but not in the French subtitles. Iosseliani supervised the French subs and prefer it this way, so Carlotta kept them as such.

[kekid]

Can someone please give English titles of the films contained in the Iosseliani set? Thank you.

[pistolwink]

It's all of his films. Just look at the first post in this thread.

[Aunt Peg]

Got my set today from FNAC. Did a quick flick through some of the films and the visuals are outstanding.

Can't wait to discover the Iosseliani films I haven't seen and revisit the ones I have. Can off load my DVDs now.