Buba Beboshvili is a young Georgian director, who started his career with photography and directing, he has actively worked in the medium of fashion film and music videos.
A fragment from his new experimental work “I is another” premiered at Fashion Film Festival Tbilisi. Buba discusses with us his creative process, interests, his growth as an artist, the concept of fashion film, and its characteristics.
“I is another”
As a teenager, I got carried away with photography and took random photos of my friends, after a while I just realized that photography wasn’t enough for me to tell the story behind it, so I tried very casually, with no budget, to shoot my friend Nutsa Kukhianidze, with the help of my friends (“Girl With One Eye”). That was my first time working with a camera, and directing, and then I realized that I had discovered the ideal medium for expressing the story behind the project, I haven’t stopped since and it was my first experience of working with video.
When I plan the project, I am always clear and confident about which costume we should use to tell the story of a specific character, because Fashion and Film are so intertwined for me, that I don’t see them as separate elements; they always stand together in my projects, and every detail helps me express what I want to say through my characters. I always plan ahead of time what we will use and what form or color will be used, and I believe that fashion and costume are effective ways of communicating my message. For me, fashion is that component that aids in accurately conveying the story.
In my case, independent works and fashion films are the same, I can’t say there is a distinction between the two, because I don’t believe there is.
small talk
When I start working on a project, one of the most important tricks or elements I have is that I always know who the main character is, and when I plan something, very concrete and specific inspiration comes, it’s strange, but it can always be something mystic, so I try to use symbols all the time, symbols that are important to me while working on a project, they help me to express what I want to say, to have a confirmation of it existing with those symbols. It can be called mystical or weird, it actually can have many names, but in general, my work is based on symbols and small signs.
To be honest, I see all the projects I’ve worked on as one big project, whether it’s a music video or a film, for me, it’s one big project with different chapters. It's a language I speak and a way to communicate with people who are interested in my world, what I’m interested in, or what inspires me, it's my spoken language.
For me, the idea is always very personal, I have a personal way of working on it, and it's very difficult to convey it through words, however this personal factor allows me to be more free and have a flow to get things done.
The group of people with whom I work is very important to me, in fact, it is the most important component for me, to have that sense of comfort that those around me understand what I want to do. After a lot of experience and time, I realized that is the most important factor for me to consider the project a success.
Although my projects can be considered and well, they are completely experimental and ultra-fictional, they are always accompanied by very casual, random, and normal feelings such as boredom. It could be a simple conversation between two people that sparks my inspiration, or it could be something very real and basic that is then unified with these symbols and signs. I try to express these poetically, but the themes are almost always simple, random, and everyday.
These mystical symbols and elements help me fill the gaps left by bad memories, chaos, and mess. It is just a comfort zone and some nice space that allows me to fill these questions and uncomfortable topics, combine them and ultimately convey them.
My most recent yet unreleased projects are devoted to the topic that we all are part of, one major thing, I realized that during the first lockdown when we were all alone, stuck in our rooms, and unable to see our loved ones, and I understood that for me, the most traumatic and uncomfortable was that we humans became distant from each other. This first isolation was a sign from the outside world that something had truly divided us. I was inspired by this confirmed external factor, and I created this work about that topic, and “I is Another” could be the last chapter of this project. I use a combination of mediums for this, including a video and a sculpture that I am still working in. By doing so, I want to put an end to the communication on those topics for myself.
“I is Another” is a quote by French poet Arthur Rimbaud and the theme stems from that as well, to leave the comfort zone I am in, exactly that is discussed in the quote as well, to leave the limits we are in to explore new places that could, in reality, be better.
I don’t intend to make a project poetic, it just happens very naturally, for me, topics like fashion and others combine poetry in itself, and poetry is one of the biggest parts of my world and inspiration.