GWIRABI

The mammoth “Belt and Road Initiative” is to serve the goal of better connecting China and Europe. What does this mean however for everything that lies in between? For the residents of a village hitherto connected to the outside world by a twice-daily regional train, globalisation initially signals its arrival via a rumble in the mountains. To a backdrop of promises of a better future, a new railway tunnel is blasted into the rock and yet the wages are too low for the Georgian workers, intercultural misunderstandings with the Chinese come to the surface and the soil crumbles under the old houses as criticism of this global infrastructure project grows. In place of better times there are doubts, strikes and a growing collective awareness that the motto “faster, higher, stronger” has the potential to leave many behind.

 Text: Bernd Buder
English: Peter Rickerby

Glad-House, Kammerbühne: original version with English subtitles + German simultaneous translation

Event information:

SlowTalk on ECOEAST
Thu Nov 10, 7∶30 pm | Slow, Glad House.

This new section at FFC discusses ecological issues and the impact of encroachment on nature and the landscape on social interaction. This year, ten films show how Georgian director*s between1934 and today deal with the issue. In "Slow" the filmmakers and experts talk about the interactions between ecology and society, industrialization and protest culture, and the role of film as a medium in the sustainability debate.