Otar iosseliani biography

With the death of the Paris-based Georgian filmmaker Otar Iosseliani, the cinema has lost one of its most idiosyncratic and uncompromisingly independent artists.

Born in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi in 1934, Iosseliani studied composing, conducting and piano at the State Conservatoire before embarking on a mathematics degree at the University of Moscow.

After two years, he switched to studying filmmaking at VGIK, where he was taught by earlier Soviet filmmakers, including Alexander Dovzhenko. He seemed to have little time for Soviet film theory or montage, however, and his 1961 featurette April was refused a release due to its ‘excessive formalism’.

A spell working in factories and on fishing boats ensued until 1966, when his first full-length feature, Falling Leaves, fared no better with the authorities – unsurprisingly, given that it centred on an idealistic worker at a wine collective in confl