Taming the Garden / Motviniereba

Taming the Garden follows uprooted trees destined for the garden of Eden a wealthy man wants to create. With each uprooting, tensions erupt between the workers and Georgian villagers.  The film highlights the ease with which a people’s roots can be destroyed to the benefit of one individual, disconnected from the surrounding nature they appropriate.

“When I film, I try to consider each frame as a scene unto itself. There need to be several elements in it, not just the one thing we’re concentrating on. To do that, I use wide angles and spaced-out cuts. It’s a true pleasure to find a frame capable of telling a whole story all by itself, that contains a kind of development and then wags its tail at the end. For me, using fewer cuts signifies remaining closer to what is authentic, creating a sense of presence, and taking advantage of the pure reality of the moment.” Salomé Jashi, cineuropa.org

“I treat certain frames like paintings, paintings in motion that arouse the sense of a mix of the real and the unreal.”  Salomé Jashi, cineuropa.org 

“Providing a devastating metaphor for a world gone mad, this is a poetic, provocative example of how a hard-hitting documentary tug on the communal conscience can also be wittily artistic.” empireonline.com