The church that Tbilisi calls the Blue Monastery takes its name from the coloured glazed tiles that cover its dome, a note of unexpected brilliance above the rooflines of the central districts. Its core is medieval, and successive periods have added, repaired and altered the structure around it, so that the building reads as a compressed history of the city rather than the work of a single moment. Like many Georgian churches, it passed through a twentieth century in which religious buildings were closed, repurposed or left to decay before returning to worship, and traces of that interruption remain legible in the fabric. The film approaches the monastery at close range: the geometry of the drum and dome, the surviving carved stonework, the interior where candlelight and icons define the space and where a small congregation keeps the daily offices. Around it, Tbilisi presses in with traffic and apartment blocks, and the contrast between the enclosure and the street is part of the subject.
