Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze
The Invisible Hand of My Father
Film
Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze, The Invisible Hand of My Father, 2018, film, installation view, Palais Attems, Graz, photo: Liz Eve
Dates
20.9.–13.10.2019
Details
Duration: 24:02 min.
Location
Palais Attems
Graz
Production specifics
Produced by Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze
Research supported by Berlin Senate Department for Culture
With an evocative mix of drone footage, 3-D animation, interviews, and voiceovers in a DIY aesthetic, Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze tells the story of his father, a former car-factory manager turned migrant construction worker who lost his hand on the job in Portugal just as the financial crisis of 2009 was wreaking havoc all over the world. It was the “invisible hand of the market” that took his father away from his home when post-Soviet economic malaise hit Georgia. Now he is back home and lives as a farmer with a prosthesis that he prefers not to use, as it only impedes him. His lost hand, however, is still somewhere out there, a rogue phantom limb, still working invisibly and providing its owner with a livelihood in the form of a pension. This gives the film a bittersweet ending, in which leisure and irony win out over the physical sacrifices of work done for inscrutable, often sinister, market forces.
Directing, editing, screenplay: Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze
Music: John Adams, Arseny Avraamov, Iliko Gogiberishvili, Tim Hecker, Giorgi Koberidze, and Mark Pritchard
Sound: Giorgi Koberidze
Cast: Nugzar Gagoshidze
Retrospective
Retrospective