{"id":7149,"date":"2022-09-26T12:39:07","date_gmt":"2022-09-26T10:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2022\/09\/26\/salt-for-svanetia-review-poetic-dreamlike-soviet-documentary-of-forgotten-world\/"},"modified":"2022-09-26T12:39:07","modified_gmt":"2022-09-26T10:39:07","slug":"salt-for-svanetia-review-poetic-dreamlike-soviet-documentary-of-forgotten-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2022\/09\/26\/salt-for-svanetia-review-poetic-dreamlike-soviet-documentary-of-forgotten-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Salt for Svanetia review \u2013 poetic, dreamlike Soviet documentary of forgotten world"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mikhail Kalatozov\u2019s 1930s film gives a fascinating account of a medieval-style society about the supposed blessings of the USSR\u2019s modernising impact<\/p>\n

In 1930, just as Luis Bu\u00f1uel was releasing his classic L\u2019Age d\u2019Or<\/a>, the Georgian director Mikhail Kalatozov gave us the 55-minute silent movie Salt for Svanetia, an equally rich, strange and mysterious work of ethno-fantasy and social-surrealist reverie. It is theoretically a documentary about the blessings which Soviet modernisation brought to the remote community of Ushguli<\/a> in the Svanetia province<\/a> of north-west Georgia; it contains a people governed by tribal traditions going back to the middle ages. Working with editor and formalist literary critic Viktor Shklovsky, and inspired by a magazine article by the writer Sergei Tretyakov, Kalatozov appears to have been initially undecided whether his film set in Svanetia would be fact or fiction. He settled \u2013 ostensibly \u2013 on the former.<\/p>\n

The fundamental idea is that Svanetia\u2019s people are on the brink of starvation because they have no salt, which their cattle need to lick to get vital mineral nutrients. They are surrounded by impassable mountains and glaciers so little or no salt can be brought in. Cattle have to lick the sweat from other animals or humans \u2013 one of many bizarre closeup vignettes \u2013 or from urine, or even blood. Clearly, a road built with Bolshevik industry will help them.<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a>
\nMikhail Kalatozov\u2019s 1930s film gives a fascinating account of a medieval-style society about the supposed blessings of the USSR\u2019s modernising impact
\nIn 1930, just as Luis Bu\u00f1uel was releasing his classic L\u2019Age d\u2019Or, the Georgian director Mikhail Kalatozov gave us the 55-minute silent movie Salt for Svanetia, an equally rich, strange and mysterious work of ethno-fantasy and social-surrealist reverie. It is theoretically a documentary about the blessings which Soviet modernisation brought to the remote community of Ushguli in the Svanetia province of north-west Georgia; it contains a people governed by tribal traditions going back to the middle ages. Working with editor and formalist literary critic Viktor Shklovsky, and inspired by a magazine article by the writer Sergei Tretyakov, Kalatozov appears to have been initially undecided whether his film set in Svanetia would be fact or fiction. He settled \u2013 ostensibly \u2013 on the former.
\nThe fundamental idea is that Svanetia\u2019s people are on the brink of starvation because they have no salt, which their cattle need to lick to get vital mineral nutrients. They are surrounded by impassable mountains and glaciers so little or no salt can be brought in. Cattle have to lick the sweat from other animals or humans \u2013 one of many bizarre closeup vignettes \u2013 or from urine, or even blood. Clearly, a road built with Bolshevik industry will help them. Continue reading…Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mikhail Kalatozov\u2019s 1930s film gives a fascinating account of a medieval-style society about the supposed blessings of the USSR\u2019s modernising impact In 1930, just as Luis Bu\u00f1uel was releasing his classic L\u2019Age d\u2019Or, the Georgian director Mikhail Kalatozov gave us the 55-minute silent movie Salt for Svanetia, an equally rich, strange and mysterious work of …<\/p>\n

Salt for Svanetia review \u2013 poetic, dreamlike Soviet documentary of forgotten world<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7150,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7149"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}