Self-Portrait Along the Borderline (Avtoportreti zghvarze) (2023) by Anna Dziapshipa
Wednesday, September 30, 2026, 7:00 pm
Self-Portrait Along the Borderline
Alternative Visions — Program 4
Presented in association with Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Admission: $18 General / $12 Cinematheque Members
Event tickets here
Alternative Visions
September 9–November 18, 2026
This fall BAMPFA’s long-running annual series of historical and contemporary experimental film includes the work of dozens of artists across ten programs, beginning with a program of cinematic investigations into automation and AI with Gibbs Chapman in person. The series continues into November with a program of films made by members of the Oakland-based Black Hole Collective Film Lab. Brydie O’Connor is in person with her archival portrait of queer experimental film pioneer Barbara Hammer. The late Marjorie Keller’s intimate 16mm films have a rare screening to mark the publication of a new book about her work. Artist Naeem Mohaiemen presents and discusses A Missing Can of Film (2025) in conjunction with BAM’s exhibition Private Frontiers. A selection of works made by COUSIN collective artists, including Sky Hopinka’s 2017 consideration of the Dakota Access Pipeline protest and Lindsay McIntyre’s film about caribou and lichen—made using those materials in the photographic process—screen with Lebanese artist Christophe Katrib’s This Dissonance (2024). Harun Farocki’s influential 2003 essay film War at a Distance and Gazan artist Mahmoud Alhaj’s recent videos examine how perception can be limited in the context of war and/or conflict. (Kate MacKay, Film Curator)
Alternative Visions
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Alternative Visions, program 4: Self-Portrait Along the Borderline
In Conversation: Anna Dziapshipa, Salomé Asatiani, Anka Gujabidze and Susan Oxtoby
Anna Dziapshipa was born in Tbilisi to an Abkhazian father and a Georgian mother. As a child, her Abkhazian surname was initially associated with her grandfather’s footballing success, but it has since become closely linked to the conflict that has kept the two nations in opposition since 1992. This situation had a profound effect on her childhood and identity, caught in the middle of two warring countries. In Self-Portrait Along the Borderline, the filmmaker returns to the Abkhazian family home built by her grandfather, located in a country that is off-limits to Georgian citizens and still not recognized by Georgia. (Alice Riva, Visions du Réel)
SCREENING:
Self-Portrait Along the Borderline (Avtoportreti zghvarze) (2023) by Anna Dziapshipa (Georgia); DCP, B&W/color, Georgian and Russian with English subtitles, 50 minutes. Source: Anna Dziapshipa. Contemplation (2017) by Anna Dziapshipa (Georgia); DCP, B&W/color, Georgian with English subtitles, 18 minutes. Source: Anna Dziapshipa. Dear Dirty Tbilisi (2016) by Anna Dziapshipa (Georgia); DCP, B&W, Georgian with English subtitles, 11 minutes. Source: Anna Dziapshipa.
TRT: 79 minutes
Self-Portrait Along the Borderline (Avtoportreti zghvarze) (2023) by Anna Dziapshipa
In Self-Portrait Along the Borderline, the filmmaker returns to the Abkhazian family home built by her grandfather, located in a country that is off-limits to Georgian citizens and still not recognized by Georgia (Alice Riva, Visions du Réel)
Contemplation (2017) by Anna Dziapshipa
An investigation of Georgia’s Soviet past and a so-called “Terror House,” located in the heart of Tbilisi’s Sololaki district.
Dear Dirty Tbilisi (2016) by Anna Dziapshipa
Guram Tsibakhashvili’s photo archive from the 1990s forms the basis of this film about the early days of Georgian independence and its vibrant art scene.