Youth, freedom, and electronic music. A documentary film about a two-day rave at the Georgian Parliament which ended with apologies from the country’s minister of internal affairs and the legalization of marijuana consumption.
A crime news story: in Spring 2018, Georgian law enforcement authorities conducted a large-scale anti-drug operation during which the police raided the Tbilisi nightclubs Bassiani and Café-Gallery. The raids had completely unexpected consequences however, as the young Georgians went on a rally to the parliament building, which very quickly grew into a massive rave.
Born almost incidentally (director Stepan Polivanov and a team of producers happened to be in Tbilisi during the protests while scouting for their new documentary), Raving Riot is not so much a story of an historical event as a portrait of present-day Georgia—a free country full of its own contradictions. In this picture, electronic music lovers go hand in hand with elderly citizens nostalgically reminiscing about the Soviet times and nationalists ready to fight for ‘traditional’ values. Without smoothing over these complexities, the authors of the film reveal a continuity between the different generations co-existing within Georgian society and make an attempt to inscribe the events of May 2018 into the country’s centuries-long history.
The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the authors of the film Stepan Polivanov, Arina Noskova, and Ida Ivanova.
Raving Riot
Director: Stepan Polivanov
Russia, Georgia, 2018. 61 min. 18+