Magdana's Donkey

Magdanas lurja

Georgia, Soviet Union

1955

50 Min

Black and White

Georgian

Currently 4.1/5 Stars.
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DIR Tengiz Abuladze, Rezo Chkheidze

SCR Ekaterine Gabashvili, Carlo Gogodze

DP Aleqsandre Digmelovi, Lev Sukhov

CAST Dudukhana Tserodze, L. Moistsrapishvili, Mikho Borashvili, Nani Chiqvinidze, Akaki Kvantaliani, Karlo Sakandelidze, Akaki Vasadze, Aleqsandre Omiadze, Aleqsandre Takaishvili

ED Vasili Dolenko, O. Gevorqiani

This chamber drama is set in Georgia on the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. A simple peasant family makes its living by selling yogurt which the Magdany widow takes every morning to the town market. Once, in their mother’s absence, the children – six-year-old Mikho and three-year-old Kato – found an abandoned donkey on a road leading to their village. The foundling was fed, tended, and the moment the donkey opened its big, tender eyes, it was named “Lurdja”, which means “blue-eyed”. Surrounded by love and care, the donkey became a big help in the poor household. But this idyll was not to last long… —RUSCICO

Director

Tengiz Abuladze

Best known internationally for his allegorical, politically charged film Repentance (1987), Georgian filmmaker and screenwriter Tenghiz Abuladze specialized in carefully crafted films that focused on relationships between people, without moral judgment or sociopolitical analysis.

Abuladze was born in Kutaisi, Georgia, back when the country was a state of the Soviet Union. In the 1940s, he studied at the Shota Rustaveli Theatrical Institute and after graduation decided to study film at the Moscow Film Institute with his close friend Revaz Chkheidze. The two studied under Sergei Yutkevich and Mikhail Romm. Abuladze and Chkheidze graduated in 1952. Their diploma film was a biography of Georgian composer Dimitry Arakishvili. As with his subsequent solo work, Abuladze’s first professional feature, made in collaboration with Chkheidze, centered on Georgian life. A simple tale of a group of children who adopt a charcoal merchant’s lost jackass and then go to court when he wants it back… read more

Best known internationally for his allegorical, politically charged film Repentance (1987), Georgian filmmaker and screenwriter Tenghiz Abuladze specialized in carefully crafted films that focused on relationships between people, without moral judgment or sociopolitical analysis.

Abuladze was born in Kutaisi, Georgia, back when the country was a state of the Soviet Union. In the 1940s, he studied at the Shota Rustaveli Theatrical Institute and after graduation decided to study film at the Moscow Film Institute with his close friend Revaz Chkheidze. The two studied under Sergei Yutkevich and Mikhail Romm. Abuladze and Chkheidze graduated in 1952. Their diploma film was a biography of Georgian composer Dimitry Arakishvili. As with his subsequent solo work, Abuladze’s first professional feature, made in collaboration with Chkheidze, centered on Georgian life. A simple tale of a group of children who adopt a charcoal merchant’s lost jackass and then go to court when he wants it back, Magdan’s Donkey earned a special prize for short films at the Cannes Film Festival in 1966. Abuladze’s first solo effort, Chuzhiye Deti/Someone Else’s Children (1958) was a nearly silent affair that provided an insightful, but almost melodramatic look at a Georgian family.

From a technical view, Abuladze was a meticulous craftsman, who laid out his storylines in such great detail that he knew to the subtlest twitch and the finest detail exactly what he wanted from his actors and his production crew. He first gained international prominence in 1978 with highly acclaimed, multi-award-winning The Wishing Tree and in 1980 earned the designation of National Artist of the Soviet Union. By far his most important film was his last, Repentance (1986). Using an almost surrealistic mixture of fantasy, drama, and satire, it strongly criticizes Stalin’s atrocities in Georgia, but more importantly, it is a powerful indictment against totalitarianism in general. It was originally made for Georgian television, but then changed into a feature. Though it was completed in 1984, the Soviet government considered the subject matter too critical and banned it for two years. Repentance was nominated for a “Best Foreign Film” Oscar in 1987. In 1988, Abuladze received the Lenin Prize. Between 1990 and 1991, he served as a member of Soviet Parliament. —allmovie

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