Festival, the first of its kind in the South Caucasus region, was founded by JAMPROJECT in 2021.

Festival aims to advance film as a form of communication in fashion, to support development of visual communication and new vision. It commits to emphasize the importance of Fashion film’s creative value, to activate all the points where fashion meets other fields of art and also to see the connection and interdependence of fashion and cinema in the form of Fashion Film.

The festival sees itself as a unifying force between the audience and creator, as a platform for dialogue and collaboration.

Fashion Film Festival Tbilisi is a place where fashion unites other forms of art.

PHILOSOPHY

In a time when the world fashion industry was shaping, Georgia was part of the world where individualism – the main value that makes fashion what it is – did not exist. Clothing was created to meet basic needs and remained in the same category. Soviet philosophy, with its closed borders and totalitarian system of government, ruled out fashion as an art form, from the very beginning. Therefore, Georgia hasn’t only been excluded as a participant in the fashion birth but also has never been an observer. After gaining independence, in the post-Soviet period, this small country had a not-so-favorable geopolitical, socio-economic and political position: This instability created an environment for fashion to be perceived as a non-serious, superficial and at the same time inaccessible, one might say even unnecessary phenomenon.

However, the thinking resources of a newly independent country’s citizens are naturally directed towards creation, to search the new ways, to speak up, even to make noise drawing attention, to start the struggle of finding and establishing authentic self.

Naturally, Georgian fashion was born but only thanks to the great effort and work. It soon managed to become a part of the world’s fashion industry and business.

It is paradoxical that controversial question – where fashion belongs the most, the business or the art – is probably the most relevant to the Georgian fashion scene today. If other forms of art have means to form local cultural conception as there still exists Georgian theater, cinema and photography and etc. for local audience.

It’s out of the question for Georgian fashion as in developing countries the industry itself requires to work for the global audience and market instead of a local one, immediately making it part of a bigger system, where there are existing demands and frameworks. Unfortunately, only blending in this system is a guarantee for the designer to continue the work.

Georgian fashion is now on the verge of being completely shrouded by the need for commercialization, with an unintentional motivation that only commercialization can prolong its existence. Partially this is true, fashion as a business supports fashion as an art and vice versa. 

When Georgian fashion was establishing itself in the global fashion world, the admission ticket in it was the young, creative and talented artistic generation, however, this transitional phase was so short that it didn’t give time to create a real phenomenon of authentic Georgian fashion.  Soon being fully absorbed by the global fashion market made Georgian fashion a common player. Even on the local level, the system is so active with its demands and requirements (including financial resources) that there is no space left for individuals for whom creating fashion in traditional, common forms has become an impossible task. As if the commercial part has fully taken over the local fashion industry, the creative process and every aspect of it starts by considering the final commercial outcome.

In this strictly time-framed process, the value of fashion as art is vanishing, so is the creative freedom and enthusiasm. Fashion becomes the clothes’ manufacturer and disappears as a language of communication. Evidently, fashion in Georgia was born as a form of art but continued to develop as a business and this process appears to be irreversible.

Jamproject’s mission is to remain as a supporter of Georgian fashion as an industry with growing and sustainable economic potential but at the same time to create barriers for the irreversible process of full commercialization, where every step would prove that fashion is a full-fledged part of art.

Our goal is to recall and activate all the fields where fashion intersects with other forms of art. At this point, our particular interest lies to explore the connection between cinema and fashion and especially to explore Fashion film – as an intersection of those two. Being more relevant today as ever, considering the situation with everything becoming more digitalized, fashions accessibility as art passes through such mediums.

Fashion film is a way of communication for the brands, one of the essential components in the creation of brands philosophy and identity. Analyzing the modern and global fashion world allows us to see the need for establishing Fashion film as a form of communication in Georgian fashion, for the local scene to become more free, creative and expressive.

Fashion film direction first appeared in Georgia along with fashion, the works were created but never evolved and eventually they have lost their relevance, as the motivation for their creation was proportional to the interest in Georgian fashion at that time.

The small audience affected both the demand and the quality of the product. Works were created, however, so scattered and impulsive that they were not enough to form the phenomenon of fashion film as a genre and as one of the outstanding components of Georgian fashion industry. We think that now, in conditions of growing market demand, in the process of establishing Georgian fashion industry as a strong sustainable field, Fashion film is an inevitable creation as a measure of the industry’s quality and success. Which will contribute to the development of fashion as a business and at the same time emphasize its creative value.

Fashion Film Festival Tbilisi creates motivation for fashion film to be established as one of main forms of communication in Georgian Fashion, as festival itself provides a bigger platform for individuals of various professions working in the industry. We believe that Fashion film as a medium provides a variety of means of self-expression and ensures independence of thought and vision.

The format of the festival also includes a revision of works that have been created in Georgia since the 2000s and were classified as fashion films.  The platform discusses fashion film's close connection and very blurred boundaries with different genres of cinema and presents the importance of both film and fashion as a collaborative art, as well as studying the interrelationship between cinema and fashion in context of time.

One of the main subjects of the platform’s research is to explore the space in time between the dates of birth of cinematography and fashion and to explore and review visual works created in these loops with the criteria and components that make up the fashion film.