MY GRANDMOTHER

An office clerk who got fired jumps at the chance of a new job, but first he must battle with the authorities to obtain a document of highly dubious worth. Kothe Mikaberize’s masterpiece of early cinema conveys the ugly face of bureaucracy by blending representational film with stop-motion animation, slapstick, and expressionistic composition. This milestone of Georgian film is frankly critical of the still young Stalinist-Soviet machinery imposing massive suffering on a population. On the screen, at least, the bureaucratic madness meets with popular resistance. Banned by the Soviet censors, it was first shown almost 40 years after completion.