Tengiz Abuladze

Director 

Biography

Date of birth 31 January1924, Kutaisi (USSR, Georgia)

Date of death 6 March, 1994

Georgian State Award Winner (1979). People’s Artist of Soviet Union  (1980).  Studied theatre directing faculty at Tbilisi Shota Rustaveli Theatre Institute, Georgia (1943-1946), and film-making at VGIK (Moscow State Institute of Cinematography) (Sergei Yutkevich’s class), graduated in 1953. Then he joined Georgia Film Studio as a director. He made documentaries before making his feature debut in 1958. His best-known work in the West is the trilogy Vedreba (Entreaty) (1968), Natvris khe (Tree of Desire) (1977) and Monanieba (Repentance) (1987), the later being one of the first films to be released in the post-glasnost era, and one of the most controversial, thanks to its allegorical portrait of a small town under tyranny. It had a huge success in the Soviet Union, and achieved reasonable distribution abroad, almost unheard of for a Georgian film.

 

Filmography

1. Chveni sasakhle (1953) (Director) (Writer)

…aka Our Palace

…aka Nash dvorets

2. Qartuli tsekvis sakhelmtsipo ansambli (1954) (Director)

…aka Georgian National Ballet

…aka Gosudarstvennyi ansambl narodnogo tantsa Gruzij

3. Magdanas lurja (1955) (Director) (Writer)

…aka Magdana’s Donkey

…aka Lurdzha Magdany

4. Dimitri Arakishvili (1955) (Director) (Writer)

5. Skhvisi shvilebi (1958) (Director) (Writer)

…aka Someone Else’s Children

…aka Chuzhiye deti

6. Me, bebia, Iliko da Ilarioni (1963) (Director) (Writer)

…aka I, Grandmother, Iliko & Illarion

…aka  Ya, babushka, Iliko I Illarion

7. Svanur-Tushuri chanakhatebi (1965) (Director) 

…aka Sights of Svaneti &Tusheti

…Svanskije I Tushetskije zarisovki

8. Kto pridumal koleso? (1966) (Writer)

…aka Who Had Invented the Wheel?

9. Vedreba (1967) (Director) (Writer)

…aka The Prayer

…aka Entreaty

…aka Molba

10. Samkauli chemi satrposatvis (1972) (Director) (Writer)

…aka A Necklace for My Beloved 

…aka Ozherelye dlya moyey lyubimoy

11. Muzeumi gia tsis qvesh (1972) (TV) (Director) 

…aka Open-Air Museum (Dagestan)

…aka Muzei pod otkritim nebom

12. Natvris khe (1977) (Director) (Writer)

…aka The Ttree of Desire

…aka Drevo zhelaniya

13. Monanieba (1986) (Director) (Writer)

…aka Repentance 

…aka Pokayaniye