It is a usual evening in Tbilisi. On the outskirts of the city, the parking lot in front of a large, but out-of-business club is packed with cars. Not very long ago, there were many such clubs operating under the banner of the hammer and  sickle. Now, though, huge projectors are ablaze in the yard which is crowded with people - actors, members of the crew, children and the curious onlookers. This night, director Nana Jorjadze is shooting several scenes of her new movie. Members of the crew are busy unloading equipment from the cars and assembling them.  They are putting up a red poster at the club’s entrance and mounting strange placards. Every second a mobile phone rings and snatches of conversations can be heard - “Hasn’t he arrived yet? I will call right away”....”We’ll perhaps have another sleepless night “ ... “Come immediately, the shooting has started “...”Don’t wait, I won’t be back till morning!”

Soon the director appears. Nana Jorjadze is charming as always, smiling at everyone, talking busily. It is hard to believe that she has been up most of the previous night on the set, and that she is operating on a mere three hours sleep. Time passes without notice and the hall in the club is packed. There are many familiar faces in the front rows. Nana looks through the camera, rearranging some of the actors, giving last minute instructions. Soon, everything becomes quiet and the shooting begins.

In 1997, for the first time a Georgian film was nominated for an Academy Awards in the category of the best foreign film. It was Nana Jorjadze’s Georgian-French film 1001 Recipes of the Chef in Love. In those days everyone in Georgia was talking about the French actor Pierre Richard and director Nana Jorjadze. Then, in the American press the words appeared, “With Jorjadze’s film, Americans discovered a new cinema world.”

After the Oscar nomination, the film was also featured in several other international film festivals - Cannes, Anapa, Karlovy Var, Riga. It received awards for the best film, best script, best actress, best foreign film, and best  actor. After receiving this award at the Cannes festival, Pierre Richard told Nana, “I have been an actor for forty years now, and this is my first best actor award. In fact this is also the first film in which I appeared at the Cannes festival. Isn’t it amazing, that I needed to come to Georgia for people to see what a really good actor I am?”

The film 1001 Recipes of the Chef in Love was made in cooperation with the Adam and Eve Film Studio. This studio currently has many interesting projects, one of them a feature-documentary about the Silk Road -TRACECA project. The film Nana is working on now will be her second one with the Adam and Eve Studio.
“I still do not know what I will film and what will be the final result when  shooting wraps up. This is a joint Georgian-German-French-British-Danish film. The crew and actors are mostly Georgian. The sound operator is German, as we will be recording sound live, and we do not have the necessary equipment in Georgia. There is an American cameraman who has worked  with a number of interesting directors. Along with the Georgian cast, two Russian actors also have roles in the movie. We are all old friends and colleagues. There are so many difficulties associated with filmmaking that if you are not among friends, it is just that much harder.

“I always prefer to work in Georgia. Here everything helps - the air, soil, to say nothing of the family and friends. When I am somewhere else, I get exhausted and run down. This land and this country fill me with energy. I want to say that we are fortunate to have many good directors. We have some real cinematographic talent in Georgia. Our cinema is a singular phenomenon. There are many gifted directors who have little opportunity to make films, and on the other hand there are so many good films that for different reasons are not known to the international audiences. I have been fortunate. I am not more talented or in any way better than others, I was simply lucky. I sometimes wonder why God has blessed me this way.

“Every day of the shooting is like a torture -  there are a number of crosses to bear. I look at so many people and think: God, what shall I shoot? How? Have I the right to? So much money is spent - cinema is an expensive enterprise. It is not like a poem, if you fail, you can tear it up with no harm is done. And at the same time, each day of filming brings enormous happiness. I belong to the cinema. When I am not working, I do not feel alive.”

Before the faculty of the Tbilisi Institute of Cinematography opened 25 years ago, the future film director Nana Jorjadze studied architecture at Tbilisi Academy of Arts. To this day, she fondly remembers years spent at the Academy, and particularly her professor Otar Jakeli.

The academic year at the Institute in that year began on October the first. Tengiz Abuladze and Irakli Kvirikadze were the first cinematography professors and Nana Jorjadze was among the first students. On October 27,  the student Nana Jorjadze married Irakli Kvirikadze, but up until the last minute, that is, until October 26, she would call him Professor Kvirikadze. Kvirikadze wrote the script for the Chef in Love and most of Nana’s other films, including the one they are shooting now.
Nana Jorjadze has two sons. The eldest, Buba, studied medicine, but currently works in the film business. The younger, Mikho, graduated from a cinematographic college in the States and has already worked on six movies. He is in Georgia now and is working together with his parents on their new film.

“All the family are at the shooting. We help each other enormously. True, Irakli always tells me I spoil his script, but what can he do? And he forgives me - I am his wife after all. I remember once we were working, if my memory serves me right, on Robinzoniada. Irakli came, watched for a while what I was doing and then told me: “No, Nana, no, you cannot do that. You can’t leave this the way it is.” I became cross and shouted, “Get away from here, you, disappear!” “Oh, I will, too,” he shouted back, “You’ll never see me again!” All the staff were in the corridor, listening nervously. I believe they thought we would kill each other. Then Irakli left, came back after a while and we forgot all about the incident. It was three or four o’clock in the morning when we left for home. Irakli put his arm around me and said, “How lucky we are, Nana.  Together for so long, and never once have we quarreled.” That indeed is true. Work and family are two different worlds for us.
“I must admit that I am a very bad housewife. I cannot cook. I remember once the family was forcing into themselves yet another terrible meal I had cooked for them and Irakli told me, “You know, Nana, you must really love someone dearly to eat this.” Nevertheless, our house is always full of visitors. Some even stay for months. We cannot live any other way.

“Soon our friend Pierre may come again to take part in the new movie. I first met him in Cannes. This man, who in fact is usually typecast in his films, is in real life an intelligent, rather sad and serious man. I was very surprised. I simply asked him if he had ever thought of changing his image and playing a different role. “Of course,” he promptly replied, “You offer and I will accept.” I thought he was joking. Later, however, he returned to the subject himself and I immediately got in touch with Irakli. I told  to start writing a script for him right away. Irakli would not believe me and it took me ages to convince him. Finally the script was ready. Pierre read it, liked it and said, “Let’s start work then, I am in love with the Chef in Love.” That is how he got involved in the film. We worked on the film when virtually no one was shooting in Georgia - the grave political situation, tragedies, unhealed wounds. The shooting inspired amazing merriment.  Enthused, many people came to me: “Are we really shooting a film again? Working again?” We were all very happy.

“To be nominated for an Academy Award is truly a celebration, and no doubt a gift to anyone who has devoted their life to filmmaking. Spectacular, beautiful movies help you forget all your problems and worries.

“I was wearing my grandmother’s dress at the Academy Awards ceremony. I love my grandfather’s vests and father’s shirts, my  mother’s and grandmother” robes... I think that clothes always retain the warmth and energy of  the people who have worn them.

The Jorjadzes are one of the oldest Georgian families, whose origins date back to the sixth century. They are of Meskhetian origin, but predominantly lived in Gremi, Kakheti. Gremi is their ancestral church. Traditionally, the Jorjadze men were winemakers and were the only ones to produce the popular labels Gremi and Eniseli. In 1921 Nana Jorjadze’s grandfather was exiled by the Communists. In their house in Gremi, a school and a local administration office was opened. Nana’s uncle Vakhtang Jorjadze also spent 25 years in exile. Her mother’s family did not remain untouched by the repressions. Her maternal grandfather, a Polish shipbuilder, was invited here to work and three years later in 1937 he was executed as an “enemy of the people.”

Nana’s parents had known each other since childhood, and literally spent all their life together. Following countless evictions, they finally settled in the attic of a house in Chorokhi Street where they lived for years.

Nana spent her childhood in that attic, every corner of that attic hid wonders, running across one roof to another, swallow nests, a visit by a mysterious rabbit at every Easter which only left a basket full of red eggs and a trail of wet footsteps at the entrance door.

“We were little children, my brother and I, when our uncle Rostom Amirejibi returned from his thirty years of exile. I remember he taught us how to play chess. Once, he insisted that we take him to Gremi. We all went together. In the garden of the house that used to belong to us, he began to dig ground. He dug up several different places.  My brother and I were ecstatic, and joined him. In one word we were after a treasure. Uncle indeed found something, it was a sack in which three volumes of Byron and one of Shakespeare were wrapped in an old hand-knitted jacket. I learned then that our family had possessed a very rich library in Gremi, they even maintained a certain temperature to preserve the oldest editions. In 1921, when the Russian army invaded Georgia, the soldiers would use the books for fuel to make borscht. The little boy could do nothing but seize the four volumes, wrap and bury them. Today these books are in my house and of course they are to me, much more than simply volumes of Byron or Shakespeare - they represent the history of my family, and perhaps our nation too.

“Years passed, and when I already worked at the film studio someone brought an old album to add to the prop collection. The girls knew that I often bought antique things and called me over to look. I bought and took it home. I did not even have time to open it, and put it on top of the piano. Father came home and asked whose album it was and opened it. Suddenly I heard, ‘Where did you get this? This is my mother, father, and me when three!’  Thus, the album turned out to be our family album which had been lost to us in 1921. We had not even a single photo of those days. Imagine how many different hands the album had passed through, how far it had traveled to come back to us. Was it not a miracle?

“My life is full of such strange stories. I had an incredible childhood. Whenever mother saved some money we would go to travel somewhere. We did not even have a normal bed at home, but no one paid attention to such things. Traveling, learning things and books were the most important things in life for us. Mother was a mountain climber, together with Aliosha Japaridze she has scaled many a mountain peak. My brother and I take after her a lot. We are roamers too. My parents finished a German school and were fluent in German. I remember Father would read to me Goethe, Heine, German poems. I too like to travel. I have met many interesting people and have listened to so many stories about others lives. This is all reflected in my films.”

Nana Jorjadze has made several feature and documentary films in Georgia as well as in Germany and France. Her first film Atlanta has received two international awards - best debut and the best experimental movie. Travel in Sports received five awards at the Oberhausen festival in 1987. The same year her feature film Robinzoniada, or  My English Grandpa received a Golden Camera at the Cannes 40th International Festival. She is a member of the European and American Film Academies. She is a jurist for various festivals and competitions, although she says she does not like to judge the works of other artists. She herself is a brilliant actress and has played several interesting movie characters.

An usual morning dawns in Tbilisi. Nana smiles her warm smile, thanks everyone and sets up the next take. The mobile phones that were turned off during the previous take begin to ring once more. Now they will go home, rest a little and then everything will start over again.
 
ELISO KAPANADZE