Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze

The Invisible Hand of My Father (2018)
Film

With an evocative mix of drone footage, 3-D animation, interviews, and voiceovers in a DIY aesthetic, Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze tells the story of his father, a former car-factory manager turned migrant construction worker who lost his hand on the job in Portugal just as the financial crisis of 2009 was wreaking havoc all over the world. It was the “invisible hand of the market” that took his father away from his home when post-Soviet economic malaise hit Georgia. Now he is back home and lives as a farmer with a prosthesis that he prefers not to use, as it only impedes him. His lost hand, however, is still somewhere out there, a rogue phantom limb, still working invisibly and providing its owner with a livelihood in the form of a pension. This gives the film a bittersweet ending, in which leisure and irony win out over the physical sacrifices of work done for inscrutable, often sinister, market forces.

20.9.–13.10.19

Duration: 24:02 min.

Palais Attems
Sackstraße 17
8010 Graz

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In English and Georgian with English subtitles

Free admission with Festival Pass

Produced by Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze

Research supported by Berlin Senate Department for Culture

Directing, editing, screenplay: Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze
Music: John Adams, Arseny Avraamov, Iliko Gogiberishvili, Tim Hecker, Giorgi Koberidze, and Mark Pritchard
Sound: Giorgi Koberidze
Cast: Nugzar Gagoshidze

Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze (1983, Kutaisi, Georgia) is an artist and filmmaker. His practice centers around the moving image: the political aspects of its production and its sociopolitical contexts. Gagoshidze lives in Berlin.