GORELOVKA

The open, sparse landscape of southern Georgia, and a village in which time apparently stands still. Together with the surrounding area, Gorelovka is home to the last Doukhobors (literally “spirit wrestlers”), a religious group dissenting from Russian Orthodoxy. After expulsion from Russia by Tsar Nicholas I in 1841, the dissenters settled in Georgia, where the community was long able to pursue a simple, peasant life and cultivate its traditions and identity. Their beliefs rooted in pacifism and vegetarianism have survived up to the present day, but slowly the community is disintegrating as more and more young people move away in search of employment and a better life. Alexander Kviria’s images of beauty and open countryside portray a world that will not exist for much longer. His film shows the life of the community that continues to be shaped by a spirituality in which the omnipresence of God is revealed in every living being. For that reason, the Doukhobors have no need of priests, churches or holy scriptures. And the psalms and hymns passed down orally from generation to generation will vanish with the last inhabitants of Gorelovka.