Directing

Kote Mikaberidze

Born 31 July 1896 · Temryuk, Kuban · Died 9 January 1973 at 76

Film director, scriptwriter, actor, painter and dubbing director. From 1918, he worked as an actor at the Kutaisi and Batumi theaters, moving to Tbilisi drama studio in the 1920s. He started to act in films from 1921. His first screenplay RTVELI (The Harvest), based on Dziga Vertov’s “Kino-Eye” concept, was submitted to Tbilisi film studio in 1928, but was never produced. In 1929, he made a silent film CHEMI BEBIA (My Grandmother, 1929), satire on bureaucracy, which considered as a central to the Georgian avant-garde movement and was banned by the Soviet regime for 40 years (until 1976). Mikaberidze directed seven more films of various styles, forms and aesthetics, including a short documentary, a cartoon and several feature films. He was the first film director to adapt an episode of the 12th century Georgian epic Vepkhistqaosani (The Knight in the Panther’s Skin) that resulted in the 1936 film Kajeti. Mikaberidze’s film directing career ended in 1957, when he was sentenced to two years in prison for anti-Soviet activates/statements and criticism of the film administration. After his repression, he would never direct the films again, after his release from a labor camp, he worked as a dubbing director at the Tbilisi film studio, producing the Georgian language versions of up to 50 films per year.