No, didn't go there for pleasure. Tbilisi, the capital of a former soviet nation of Georgia is not your typical holiday destination, especially in the winter time, though I've heard in summer its a rather pleasant destination for wine lovers. I ended up flying there for filming reasons, documenting Ministry of Sound setting up a party in Tbilisi.Starting out first to Istanbul with tour manager and DJ Dom Chung, we flew to Istanbul to meet promoter Tanja, DJ Tony Devotion and dancers Maria and Carolina. After this small stopover it was a short 2h flight to Tbilisi. We were greeted by local organiser Jaba (The Hut as we called him) and drove to our hotel and to the bed late at 5am. Next morning early call for the venue set up and picking DJ Marc Hughes from the airport. We slowly started to get a picture waiting for us with red carpet entrance, press conferences and other massive promotional efforts. For me all this provided interesting topics for the documentary.
The Georgian hosts were very generous providing us all needed. Amazing amount of hospitality from people just now starting to recover from the collapse of the Soviet Union some 16 years ago. They were very proud of their nationality and showed great interest towards foreign views of Georgia. I saw much similarities to the recovery of Finland after the great recession in the early 90s.
In few weeks I'll have the feature edited and I'll try to get it uploaded up here. Meanwhile enjoy some photos here.
