Taming The Garden

With Taming the Garden, the Georgian film director Salomé Jashi moves the concept of uprooting from its metaphorical meaning into an oppressive, tangible and yet surreal reality. A powerful man, who is also the former prime minister of Georgia, has developed an exquisite hobby. He collects century old trees along Georgia’s coastline. He commissions his men to uproot them and bring them to his private garden. Some of these trees are as tall as 15-floor-buildings. And in order to transplant a tree of such dimensions some other trees are chopped down, electric cables are shifted and new roads are paved through mandarin plantations.