The legend of the Suram fortress

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Movie
German title The legend of the Suram fortress
Original title Ambawi Suramis tsichisa (Легенда о Сурамской крепости)
Country of production USSR ( Georgian SSR )
original language Georgian
Publishing year 1985
length 86 minutes
Rod
Director Sergei Parajanov
Dawid (Dodo) Abashidze
script Washa Gigashvili
production Grusija film
music Djansug Kachidze
camera Yuri Klimenko
cut Kora Tsereteli
occupation

The legend of the fortress Suram , also The legend of the Suram fortress (original title: Ambawi Suramis tsichisa, Georgian: ამბავი სურამის ციხისა, Легенда о Сурамской крепости , Legenda o Suramskoi kreposti), is a Soviet feature film directed by Sergey Paradiso in Georgia and Dawid Abashidze in 1984 based on the novella Die Unbindigenamen by Niko Lortkipanidze .

action

The tsar, ruler and military leader over all of Georgia congratulates the builders on starting work on the fortress of Suram . Durmishchan is released by his prince and is given a horse. For this, his lover Wardo should perform a dance with him. In the middle of the dance comes the news that the walls of the fortress do not hold up and keep collapsing. In order to participate in the repeated construction, Durmishchan sets out and Wardo thinks that she will never see him again. The next day the prince's helpers took the horse he had given him.

On his way through the country he meets Osman-aga, who tells him his life story: After the death of his father, his prince takes his house from him and he himself has to work for him as a servant. In a competition with a guest in which Osman-aga is working as an assistant, the prince loses and transfers the assistant to the guest as a profit. Osman-aga's mother begs the prince to reverse this decision, but he now forces mother and son to thresh the straw as a team on the threshing floor, which the mother does not survive. As a punishment, the son stabs the prince to death and then has to flee. On the run, he met a businessman who helped him. A friendship develops, Osman-aga becomes a businessman and a wealthy man himself. He says goodbye to Durmischchan after the conversation, pointing out that one does not forget goodness.

Meanwhile, Wardo has a child and goes to look for her lover. Visiting an old fortune teller cannot help her either. When she dies and is buried, Wardo takes over her duties. Surab, the now grown-up son Wardo, lives with his father and they both talk about the fortress Suram, the walls of which are still not standing. They come to the conclusion that only a fortune teller can help. A group from the fortress goes to one of them, but they only want to speak to me Zurab alone. She explains to him that the walls will only hold if a tall, handsome, blue-eyed youth lets himself be walled in. She gives this advice even though she realizes that it is her own son, but who does not know who she is. Back in Suram he walled himself up without telling anyone beforehand.

Wardo goes to the fortress wall to say goodbye to her walled-in son and the tsar gives her all the honors of Georgia, because the darkness over the country is over.

Production and publication

The color film had its premiere in April 1986 under the title Легенда о Сурамской крепости in Moscow after it was shown in July 1985 at the Moscow International Film Festival . Like all Georgian films , The Legend of Suram Fortress was shot in Georgian and then dubbed in Russian for the other Soviet republics . In Germany , the first performance took place on May 10, 1986 in West Berlin's Arsenal cinema .

In the GDR , the film was shown for the first time in the Babylon cinema in Berlin on January 6, 1989.

criticism

The Arsenal cinema published two reviews in its catalog sheets:

“As explosive as the film's political background may be - it is dedicated to all the Georgian warriors who gave their lives for their homeland - it impresses above all with its extraordinary stylistic means. Nothing is realistic. Even the landscape becomes a fantastic backdrop in which the actors move like the actors in a theater of life. (Carla Rhode in Tagesspiegel on May 10, 1986) "

“The actions are ritualized in their gestures, often arranged facing the audience. The locations, such as stage brochures, are not used according to an illusory logic of the location, but rather according to their cultic content. Images that symbolically tell of the passage of time and many subtitles also give the film the form of a picture arc, a folk theater that tells in episodes. (Katrin Bettina Müller in: Die Tageszeitung , Berlin, May 10, 1986) "

The lexicon of international films writes that the film adapts the novella in powerful metaphors and that the archaic meaning is conveyed in an idiosyncratic, associative picture carpet of exquisite beauty.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b PDF catalog sheets from Kino Arsenal, Berlin
  2. ↑ Neues Deutschland, January 4, 1989, p. 8
  3. ↑ The legend of the fortress of Suram. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed October 10, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used