Tbilisi: A fully renovated office equipped with modern facilities of the National Cinema Center was opened in the administrative building of old cinema studio. The new office has been opened with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Sports of Georgia.
The event was attended by Yoseb Bagaturia, Acting Minister of Culture and Sports of Georgia and Deputy Minister and Acting Head of the National Cinema Center of Georgia Koba Khubunaia.
The cinema centre’s new office was set up on the second floor of the administrative building. The interior was completely restored and repaired with the Ministry’s funds.
The process of restoration continues in the remaining part of the administrative building. The roof has already been changed, and the attractive constructions have been strengthened.
As a result, the cinema centre returned to the same place where Georgian film production began.
Although the building mentioned is over a century old, it remains in society’s memory as the film studio “Georgian Film.“
Due to its sharply expressed national elements, Soviet nomenclature disliked the building’s architecture at the time. However, today, under the conditions of independent Georgia, the already restored National Cinema Center expresses the self-sufficiency of Georgian culture as Georgian cinema.
As the public knows, since 2022, rehabilitation of the territory of the old movie studio on David Agmashenebeli Avenue and its buildings has been actively underway.
Construction of a new building began in 2023 on the site of the former wood quarry and will be completed in 2024. The building will be a multifunctional art space with a cinema hall and exhibition spaces for 100 viewers. Two brick-laying tunnels were found underground during the works, which also became part of the project.
In 2024, the demolition of the later accidental part of the former multi-studio building was completed to save and rehabilitate two historic cinema pavilions built in the 1920s.
The strengthening and repair of the former laboratory building began in 2023 and will be completed in 2025.
It started in 2024, and in August of the same year, the furnishing of storage and props spaces for five theatres was completed.
The building, built in the last quarter of the 19th century, is one of the incredible ruins of David Agmashenebeli Avenue which was originally an elite residential house.
The building was later considered a public function because of its high artistic importance. A documentary film studio has been housed here since the 1950s.
