Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost

1938. USSR. Directed by Davit Rondeli. With Dudukhana Tserodze, Bato Kraveishvili, Arkadi Khintibidze. Director and screenwriter Rondeli’s “most lasting contribution to Georgian cinema is the comedy Paradise Lost, a hilarious satire loosely adapted from Davit Kldiashvili’s classical stories about the parasitic lifestyle of impoverished nobility. Misconstrued by some officials as ‘anti-Georgian,’ the film’s production was repeatedly interrupted; however Rondeli in the end won critical recognition for his superb capturing of characters and situations. Paradise Lost is still called the best Georgian comedy of the 1930s” (Peter Rollberg, Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Cinema). In Georgian; English subtitles. 85 min.