Arrival of a Train to Oinotria: Construction of a True Form of Life in the Cinema of Otar Ioseliani Yoel Regev. Image-Correction

Abstract

The article offers a socio-philosophical reflection on Otar Iosseliani’s cinematogra- phy. The thesis is expressed that the key theme of the director’s films is the construc- tion of a certain true form of life of human communities. This form of life can exist within both socialism and capitalism, and is qualitatively different from both. The space in which it is realized is designated in the article as Enotria (“land of wine,” as the ancient Greeks called Southern Italy). The image of the “country of wine” emerges when watching many of Iosseliani’s films, and his 1999 film Adieu, plancher des vaches! even received the title Truth in Wine in Russian distribution. The way of life of this country’s population is examined by analogy with the notion of “idiorrit- mie,” which Roland Barthes devoted his 1976–1977 course at the Collège de France to analyzing. Iosseliani identifies a utopia that is immanent to the existing social order. The question remains open, however, to what extent such a utopia problematizes rather than sustains that order, because, as Alexei Tsvetkov has shown in his book Cin- emarxism, it is often based on romanticizing the past. Nevertheless, as the article shows, this utopia is not reduced entirely to a conservative position. For example, Ioseliani’s most recent film to date, Winter Song (2015), strongly evokes the theme of class struggle. The images in this film bear an unexpected resemblance to the content of Friedrich Engels’ notes on his journey from Paris to Bern.