Like many other Georgian citizens, filmmaker Salomé Jashi was startled to see images of a gigantic tree floating down the Black Sea. It was on its way to the home of Bidzina Ivanishvili, the billionaire former Prime Minister of Georgia, who wanted it for his garden. Jashi branches out with BDE.
“It looked like something I had never seen. Of course, when you see an image like this, it brings a lot of emotions, thoughts and ideas. The first transplantation was all over social media. At first, we thought it would be just one tree,” Jashi recalls. “Nobody could envisage at that time that he would want to take around 200 trees from along the Georgia coast line.”
The image inspired her to make her new documentary, Taming The Garden, a world premiere at Sundance 2021 in World Cinema Doc Competition. On the one hand, she thought it would be intriguing to see what it took to pluck gigantic trees the size of skyscrapers from the earth and to transport them to Mr Ivanishvili’s private garden. On the other, the film would have an obvious metaphorical dimension. It would enable the director to deal in oblique fashion with such subjects as power, politics, economic inequality and masculinity.
Yes, Jashi likes trees. However, she would never have made the documentary just to express her love of nature. It has deeper roots than this.
“I love nature. I like to be in nature and trees are an important part of my childhood, but I would not make this film if it was not tied to something else…trees here speak about other topics, much more than they do about nature.”
Taming The Garden was a tough project. The trees were very difficult to dislodge. It was hard to plan a schedule around them. There were night shoots and moments when the director and her crew would make a six-hour drive only to discover the transplanting had been postponed. Jashi talks of “the waiting and uncertainty” and of the dedication of her crew who were ready to film at very short notice.
“It was a lot of travelling. I wouldn’t say it was a lot of filming but more a lot of chasing – chasing locations, chasing people and chasing trees!”
It wasn’t just the trees that were challenging. “This was the film when it was most difficult for people to open up in front of the camera. Funnily or paradoxically, whatever, trees here mean politics. We are a very fragile democracy. People are afraid to speak about people in power.”
The filmmakers had to work hard to win the confidence of their subjects. Often, people would agree to be filmed and then change their mind. Nonetheless, Jashi persevered and gradually won most of the subjects over.
Early in her career, Jashi worked as a journalist but soon decided to switch to filmmaking. Journalism required her to be “brief and unbiased” but she wanted to “express herself in a long form where it is possible to present a bigger picture and also not say this is the unbiased reality.”
Through the British Council, she won a scholarship to study in the UK. She cites Gideon Koppel, her tutor at Royal Holloway, University of London, as an inspirational figure. “For me, it was crucial to have him as a tutor. He shaped my understanding of documentary. He would always say it was important to evoke something through a film rather than to show [it]. I remember he mentioned in a lecture this word ‘evoke’ and he said ‘if you don’t know this word, just look it up.’”
Jashi has taken Koppel’s advice to heart. “What I really enjoy in a film is that there is a space for interpretation. When somebody watches the film, I enjoy when they themselves can find things without me pinpointing them.”
As for Sundance, yes, it’s a frustration not to be able to go to Park City in person but the director is delighted to have been chosen for the festival. “And it’s also nice that people can see the film who wouldn’t manage to go to the physical festival.”
Taming The Garden is supported by Swiss Films and sales are handled by Canadian outfit Syndicado, who also handled Jashi’s earlier film The Dazzling Light Of Sunset, soon to be available in Europe on Netflix.
