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Artist Sophio Medoidze presents the premiere of her debut feature Let Us Flow (ვიდინოთ) together with her previous short film Xitana (ხითანა) .

Let Us Flow (ვიდინოთ) is a two-part project that explores the isolated mountainous region of Tusheti, in Northeast Georgia. The film considers the importance of ritual, the maintenance of community ties, and how modernisation and migration are transforming rural landscapes.

Shot over a period of several years, it uses inventive recording and editing techniques, sound composition and voiceover narration to offer a nuanced perspective of a culture where ancestral shrines are only accessible to men. Medoidze makes visible the symbolic and physical division of sacred spaces within the community and upends instances of performative masculinity that play out in those seasonal rituals, involving horse riding. A female artist native to Georgia, Medoidze's works engage with a plurality of voices and shifting languages to reveal the community’s varied perspectives, and how its members together grapple with the tensions between past and present.

Let Us Flow (ვიდინოთ) will be preceded by the artist’s 2019 short film Xitana (ხითანა), which captures young Tushetians shifting aspirations during Atengenoba, the region’s traditional summer festivities.

Drawing from the symbolism of kotori bread, a round staple dish commonly baked by women in the Caucasus mountains, these two works together offer a non-linear exploration of the Tush community. Its shape, which alludes to the sun’s circular movement, hints at the transience of nature as well as the cyclicality of time. For Medoidze, the concept of kotori evokes the looping sequences in her films, as well as her recurring travels to the Tusheti mountains

Introduction by the artist

• Xitana (ხითანა) 2019, HD video, colour, sound, 6 min, Tushetian dialect of Georgian and Georgian with English subtitles
• Let Us Flow (ვიდინოთ) Part 1 2022, 4K video, colour, sound, 22 min, Tushetian dialect of Georgian and Georgian with English subtitles
• Let Us Flow (ვიდინოთ) Part 2 2022, 4K video, colour, sound, 41 min, Tushetian dialect of Georgian and Georgian with English subtitles
• Conversation between Adam Pugh and the artist