• Glory To The Queen online screening and director’s Q&A

  During the 1970s and 80s, 4 Georgian women were the queens of international women’s chess. They came from the same city, were virtually neighbours, sometimes colleagues and sometimes rivals, but for 30 years Nona Gaprindashvili, Nana Alexandria, Maia Chiburdanidze and Nana Ioseliani were dominant at the very peak of female chess and also challenged the elite male players. In Georgia they were national heroines, and during the Cold War, revolutionized women’s chess across the globe, and became Soviet icons of female emancipation. Glory to the Queen is not only a film about winning and losing on the chessboard but a cinematic reflection on the individual and collective life stories of 4 remarkable and independent women.

  

  

  Filmmaker Tatia Skhirtladze‘s feature documentary Glory To The Queen unites these 4 legendary Georgian chess players after 25 years, and is both a rare look into their present lives as well as a chronicle of their lasting legacy. You can view the film on the following link until the zoom Q&A on Thursday March 25th at 6.30pm UK time. https://vimeo.com/433085738
  password: britishgeorgian250321

  Tatia will be joined by chess legend Nana Alexandria for a zoom Q&A on Thursday 25th March at 6.30pm UK time.

  

  

  

  British Georgian Society is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

  Topic: Glory To The Queen Q&A with director Tatia Skhirtladze and chess player Nana Alexandria
  Time: Mar 25, 2021 6.15pm for 6:30pm UK time
  Join Zoom Meeting
  https://zoom.us/j/93446477215?pwd=ZkJpazJwZGJTZ2dYSjk1dWlyZ0VJZz09
  Meeting ID: 934 4647 7215
  Passcode: 839428Find your local number: https://zoom.us/u/agaCjJcI7

  

• Deorientalizing the Caucasus: The New Woman’s Subjectivity in Nikoloz Shengelaia’s ‘Eliso’. Zoom event December 10th 6.30pm

  British Georgian Society and Life Through Cinema are delighted to present the film Eliso (1928) for BGS members to view by Vimeo, and a Zoom talk by silent film specialist Salome Tsopurashvili ‘Deorientalizing the Caucasus: The New Woman’s Subjectivity in Nikoloz Shengelaia’s Eliso (Caucasian Love)’ on Thursday December 10th 2020 at 6.30pm – 7.45pm. 

  Salome Tsopurashvili is a current Georgian Studies Visiting Fellow at Oxford University. Her research focuses on the early Soviet and Stalinist cinema at the intersection of history, ideology and modifications of gender dynamics. Among her publications is a chapter titled Images of ‘The New Woman’ in Soviet Georgian Silent Films in an edited volume Gender in Georgia: Feminist Perspectives on Culture, Nation and History in the South Caucasus (2017). She holds a PhD in Gender Studies from the Tbilisi State University, and a Master’s degree in Gender Studies from the Central European University in Budapest.

  

  Salome will be joined, from Tbilisi, by Georgian filmmaker Rusudan Chkonia, whose debut feature was the hugely successful Keep Smiling (Gaigimet 2012), premiered in Venice and internationally distributed. Rusudan worked with Mohsen Makhmalbaf on the film he shot in Georgia The President, and was about to shoot her own film Venice, when the pandemic delayed the start. 

  Completing the panel will be Dr. Dušan Radunović, Associate Professor in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at Durham University, who has recently written on aspects of national identity in Georgian Soviet cinema. He also curated a Tyneside Georgian film festival in 2018 Screening the Nation: Georgia 1918 – 2018.

  The evening will be moderated by BGS director Bella Radenovic-Tsulukidze. Please register for this event by emailing info@britishgeorgiansociety.org

  Join Zoom Meeting: https://zoom.us/j/96876223955?pwd=bVVpcjZiamFEK2RKckNha0NVcTFjUT09
  Meeting ID: 968 7622 3955 Passcode: Eliso2020

  

  Eliso has been made available thanks to GNFC (Georgian National Film Centre) and is one of the classic films of Georgian and Soviet silent cinema. This version has been restored under the direction of Eldar Shengelaia and with a score by Jemal Adamashvili. Set in 1864, the Tsarist regime is using Cossacks to forcibly resettle Muslim Chechen villages to Turkey. Meanwhile a local Muslim girl falls in love with a Christian Khevsur. It was released in the United States in 1929 as Caucasian Love. Eliso will be available to view from now until the lecture on https://vimeo.com/480891414 password: BGSEliso12.20  

• Mariam Batsashvili’s concert in Tonbridge, Kent, 9 May 2020

  

  

  British Georgian Society members are warmly invited to Mariam Batsashvili’s concert taking place in the medieval parish church of Tonbridge in Kent (45minutes by train from Charing Cross station) on 9 May 2020, 7.30pm. 

  Mariam Batsashvili (piano)
  9 May 2020, 7.30pm

  Parish Church of St Peter & St Paul, Tonbridge

  Mozart: Sonata No.8 in D major KV 311
  Chopin: Six Polish Songs, Op.74 (arr. for piano by Franz Liszt)
  Liszt: Rhapsodie espagnole (Spanish Rhapsody), S.254
  Ravel: Sonatine for Piano
  Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker Suite, Op.71a (arr. for piano by M Pletnev)

  Adults £20  Under-18s and Students in full-time education free  
  Under-16s must be accompanied by an adult
  This concert is also available as part of a mini-season membership (3 concerts for £50) or a full membership (5 concerts for £75)

   

• The Annual Rustaveli Lecture, 11 November 2019 at the Royal Asiatic Society
  

   

  You are warmly invited to the Annual Rustaveli Day 2019 on 11 November 2019 at 6.30pm at the Royal Asiatic Society. 

   

  H.E. Ambassador Tamar Beruchashvili will do an introductory talk to mark the 150th birth anniversary of  Marjorie Scott Wardrop, a pioneering scholar and translator of Georgian (celebrated by UNESCO in 2019). This year we continue with the Anglo-Georgian Connection Series and discover the fascinating stories of: 

  • Princess Tamara Imeretinsky, a Bagrationi of Imereti in exile; and   
  • Michael Aramyants, a prominent Tbilisian industrialist & philanthropist 
    

  The illustrated talks will be given by Princess Tamara’s daughter Nino Strachey and M. Aramyants’ g-grandson Alec D’Janoeff. Alec will be joined by his daughter, the singer-songwriter Katya, who has recently returned from living in Tbilisi and will talk about her experiences of discovering her roots and travelling in the Caucasus.

   

  The event will take place on 11 November at 18:30 at The Royal Asiatic Society 14 Stephenson Way, London, NW1 2HD 

   

  Please RSVP: info@britishgeorgiansociety.org
• Georgian linguist Nicholai Marr and his father’s British roots, 20 November 2019

  You are invited to a talk by Edward Marr to be held following our AGM on 20 November at the London Scottish House (95 Horseferry Road, SW1P 2DX). Doors open at 6.15 for a 6.30 start. Georgian wine and nibbles will be provided. 

  Nicholai Marr, Stalin’s Favourite Linguist & his Father’s British Roots Or Who was the Real James Montague Marr?

  
  During the first decades of Soviet Russia the brilliant Georgian linguist, Nicholai Marr, was famed for his Japhetic Theory on the origin of Caucasian languages. He gained many Marxist followers, including Stalin, until his ideas fell out of favour in the 1950’s.
  
  Nicholai Marr was born to a supposedly 86 year old Scottish man, James Montague Marr and 25 year old Georgian mother in Kutaisi in 1865. James Montague Marr had gone out to Georgia in 1822 and to this day there are many of his descendants in the country all, rightly, proud of their unique ancestor.
  
  But who was the real James Montague Marr, what were his roots and why did he emigrate to Georgia?
  
  Through a chance encounter online, amateur family historian Edward Marr connected to his Georgian relatives and found his paternal family history to be far more compelling than he ever expected, uncovering possible answers to an old family myth.
  
  Following on from Prof. Donald Rayfield’s talk in 2015 at the British Georgian Society on Nicholai Marr, Edward Marr has researched the family’s history in order to understand more about the origins of James Montague Marr.
  
  Please RSVP: info@britishgeorgiansociety.org

• Presentation of ‘The Eighth Life’ by Nino Haratischvili at Pushkin House, 27 November 2019
  On 27 November 2019 the British Georgian Society and Pushkin House present a discussion and reading from Nino Haratischvili’s internationally bestselling novel The Eighth Life (for Brilka). At the start of the twentieth century, on the edge of the Russian Empire, a family prospers. It owes its success to a delicious chocolate recipe, passed down the generations with great solemnity and caution. A caution which is justified: this is a recipe for ecstasy that carries a very bitter aftertaste … Stasia learns it from her Georgian father and takes it north, following her new husband, Simon, to his posting at the centre of the Russian Revolution in St Petersburg. Stasia’s is only the first in a symphony of grand but all too often doomed romances that swirl from sweet to sour in this epic tale of the red century. Tumbling down the years, and across vast expanses of longing and loss, generation after generation of this compelling family hears echoes and sees reflections. Great characters and greater relationships come and go and come again; the world shakes, and shakes some more, and the reader rejoices to have found at last one of those glorious old books in which you can live and learn, be lost and found, and make indelible new friends. Nino Haratischvili will be in conversation with Tom de Waal of the British Georgian Society on the subject of her book and the wider historical narratives it explores, accompanied by readings from the book’s English translators, Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin.

  Ticket price includes a glass of Georgian wine.

  

  Nino Haratischvili was born in Georgia in 1983, and is an award-winning novelist, playwright, and theatre director. At home in two different worlds, each with their own language, she has been writing in both German and Georgian since the age of twelve. In 2010, her debut novel Juja was nominated for the German Book Prize, as was her most recent Die Katze und der General in 2018. In its German edition, The Eighth Life was a bestseller, and won the Anna Seghers Prize, the Lessing Prize Stipend, and the Bertolt Brecht Prize 2018. It is being translated into many languages, and has already been a major bestseller on publication in Holland, Poland, and Georgia. In English, The Eighth Life is published by Scribe. Tom de Waal is a senior fellow with Carnegie Europe based in London, specializing in Eastern Europe, Russia and the South Caucasus. He reported on Russia as a journalist in the 1990s for the Times and the Moscow Times, twice worked for the BBC World Service and has written on Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan for more than 20 years. He is the author of four books about the region, including The Caucasus: An Introduction (Oxford University Press, second edition, 2018). Tom is a board member of the Britain Georgian Society and one of the judges for the 2020 EBRD Literature Prize.

  TICKETS

  BGS members are eligible for a 50% discount on the full price of the ticket, so do please email us on info@britishgeorgiansociety.org to obtain a promotional code. Tickets can be purchased from the Pushkin House’s website. https://www.pushkinhouse.org/events/the-eighth-life-with-nino-haratischvili
• Launch of Save Europe’s Heritage’s latest publication, 30 October 2019

  You are warmly invited to the London launch of the latest publication from Save Europe’s Heritage in collaboration with The Tbilisi Heritage Group entitled,  “Tbilisi Preserving a Historic City.” The launch will take place on 30th October at The Gallery, 70 Cowcross Street, London EC1M 6EJ 6-8pm.

  The new report shines a light on the incredible architectural beauty of the Paris of the Caucasus revealing surprises such as a strong constructivist and post-war modernist legacy as well as art nouveau and art deco of great majesty and delicacy.
  
  The launch will be accompanied by a mini exhibition of photographs by Richard Davies from the report, as well as other high profile Save Europe campaigns.
  
  Numbers are limited and booking is essential: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/save-europes-heritage-book-launch-tbilisi-tickets-72388559129

   

  

   

You can view all our published events here.