Gogoberidze, Lana (1928—)

Soviet filmmaker from Georgia. Born in Tbilisi, Georgia, on October 13, 1928; attended VGIK (Moscow Film School), 1959; professor of film at the Tbilisi Film Institute.

Filmography:

Gelati (1957); Tbilisi 1500 let (Tbilisi, 1,500 years old, 1959); Pod odnim nebom (Under One Sky, 1961); Ia vizhu solntse (I Can See the Sun, 1965); Rubezhi (Borderlines, 1970); Kogda zatsvel mindal (When Almond Trees Were in Blossom, 1973); Perepolokh (Confusion, 1976); Neskolko interviu po lichnym voprosam (Several Interviews on Personal Questions, 1979); Poslednoe pismo detiam (The Last Letter to Children, 1980); Den dlinnee nochi (Day Longer than Night, 1984); Krugovorot (Turnover, 1986); A Waltz on the Pechora (1987).

Lana Gogoberidze's Several Interviews on Personal Questions (1979) was the first of her films to catch the attention of the West. The movie concerns a female journalist who interviews people of varying ages—people whose lives, like her own, are falling apart. Hauntingly autobiographical, the film revolves around a mother and daughter who have been reunited after years of separation. Gogoberidze and her own mother had been separated when her mother was sent to a labor camp in the Arctic Circle during Stalin's Reign of Terror. Gogoberidze's mother had also been a filmmaker prior to her detention. The difficulties of the mother-daughter relationship serve as a recurring theme in Gogoberidze's work.

Gogoberidze's career as a filmmaker was hard won. Because her parents were political exiles (her father was killed by the secret police), Lana was not allowed to become a filmmaker. She attended the University of Tbilisi, studied literature and wrote her doctoral thesis on American poet Walt Whitman. Following Stalin's death, she was finally permitted to attend film school in Moscow, studying at the prestigious VGIK. After graduating, she made her first full-length feature, Under One Sky, the story of three women from three different periods in Georgian history.

Gogoberidze is one of the most important filmmakers of the former Soviet Union. Her 1984 film Turnabout won the Director's Prize at the Tokyo International Film Festival. A professor of film at the University of Tbilisi, she is politically active and particularly concerned with helping Georgia remain an independent nation. She was the first president of Kino Women International (KIWI), an organization to further the position of women in the film industry, and in 1987 served as president of the International Association of Women Filmmakers. In 1987, she wrote A Waltz on the Pechora, a screenplay based on her mother's recollection of her internment.

sources:

Attwood, Lynn, ed. Red Women of the Silver Screen: Soviet Women and Cinema from the Beginning to the End of the Communist Era. London: Pandora, 1993.

Foster, Gwendolyn. Women Film Directors: An International Bio-Critical Dictionary. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995.

Galichenko, Nicholas. Glasnost: Soviet Cinema Responds. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1991.

Deborah Jones , Studio City, California