Glory To The Queen is a documentary about 4 seasoned chess champions who beat the odds and proved that heroes come in many forms. What stands out about these champions is that they are all women. This is important as they became chess pros at a time in history when women were expected to be housewives and focus on taking care of their homes. We are introduced to four ladies, Nona Gaprindashvili, Nana Alexandria, Maia Chiburdanidze, and Nana Ioseliani.
The film intertwines different times in their lives and they come together after 25 years to reflect on their glory days as chess champions. They represented the small but illustrious nation of Georgia. We begin with Nona who we meet at a Senior Chess Championship, her skills still intact. The story cuts to her past when a film crew is in her home documenting her family life after a return from one of her many tournaments.
We are then introduced to Nana who is living a quiet life with her husband and dog. We learn that years prior, she had to juggle being a mum and a world chess champion who was rarely home with her family. This affected her son because he also got into chess to counter the negative feelings of his celebrity mum being away.
We also meet Maia who runs a chess school and makes perfumes as a hobby. This is an important fact about her because both chess and perfume-making require patience, tact, and precision. Finally, we are introduced to Nana Loseliani whose mother shares that she did not want her child to play chess at the time.
Many may wonder why Georgia has so many chess champions and we learn that brides were gifted with a chess set as part of their dowry. One of the people we meet in the film is a tour guide who talks about how women have shaped their history and these chess champs are the ones who carried Georgia’s flag high in the 20th Century.
Their prowess and skill are revered by fellow citizens. Many parents named their children after these chess icons as a way to wish success and fame as the name owners. It is interesting to mention that not long after the ladies were at the height of their chess success, political winds of change could be felt in the air as the USSR ceased to exist and Georgia celebrated this fact.
This is a great story that shows girls around the world that they can do whatever they set their minds to. While it may be long and winding, it shares important lessons about the small country of Georgia and the important place it holds in political and sports history.
Which subject can this film's content be more favorable for?
The story is about a small nation with world-class champions who are women that beat the odds and etched their place in sports history. This content is suitable for Women’s Studies, Culture, Sports Studies, History Classes, and Social studies courses.
What film collection would this film be suitable for?
Glory To The Queen is perfect for documentary collections. It gives you a peek into life in Georgia and its unlikely place in history with all the chess champions it gave to the world.
Does this film have Public Performance Rights available?
This documentary has Public Performance Rights available at $375, which you can get here. You can choose the digital file with performance rights or a streaming license. This is ideal for organizations and institutions.
Glory to the Queen reveals the intertwined lives of international chess heroes: Nona Gaprindashvili, Nana Alexandria, Maia Chiburdanidze and Nana Ioseliani. These four legendary female players from Georgia revolutionized women’s chess and became Soviet icons of women’s empowerment. The women leave a lasting legacy. They played together on the Soviet Union’s Olympic team, but they were also competitive with each other. Glory to the Queen brings them together again after a 25-year break, to remember their competitions and friendship. Now older, they are still important icons of the sport and the country.
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AWARDS
- Women in Film Best Pitch Award from EWA Network and Film Center Serbia at the Fest Forward Film festival in Belgrade, Serbia
- Audience Award - Free Zone Film Festival, Serbia
- Honorable Mention - Doqumenta Non-Fiction Film Festival, Mexico
- Honorable Mention - SEEfest Film Festival, U.S.
- Golden Prometheus Award - CinéDOC Tbilisi Int’l Documentary Film Festival
FILM FESTIVALS
- CinEast Film Festival, Luxembourg
- This Human World Film Festival, Austria
- The Hamburg International Queer Film Festival, Germany
- goEast Film Festival, Germany
- Bolzano Film Festival Bozen, Italy
- Mill Valley Film Festival, U.S.
- Kansas City FilmFest International, U.S.
- It’s All True International Documentary Film Festival, Brazil
- JEONJU International Film Festival, Republic of Korea
- Vox Feminae International Film Festival, Croatia
- Internationales Frauen* Film Fest Dortmund+Köln, Germany
- The International Documentary Film Festival, France
- Diagonale Festival of Austrian Film
- Sotto le stelle dell’Austria Film Series, Austria
- Espoo Ciné International Film Festival, Finland
- Millennium Docs Against Gravity, Poland
- The International Festival of Contemporary Arts – City of Women, Slovenia
- Osnabrück Independent Film Festival, Germany
- UnderhillFest, Montenegro
- Braunschweig International Film Festival, Germany
- The International Documentary Film Festival One World, Slovakia
- Triest Film Festival, IT
- East by Southeast, Denmark
- FIPADOC International Documentary Film Festival, France
THE FILMMAKER
Born in 1976 in Tbilisi, Georgia, Tatia (Tamar) Skhirtladze works and lives in Vienna, Austria. Graduated in Art Education in Tbilisi and Vienna and in Fine Arts in the Netherlands, Enschede, she currently teaches video art at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Her artistic work oscillates between visual arts and film, with a focus on site-specific as well as long-term mix media concepts. She works for different film production companies in Vienna as camerawoman and editor for documentary films, develops film education modules and conducts workshops on audio-visual artistic practices. Her first feature documentary Glory to the Queen received the Women in Film Best Pitch Award from the EWA Network and Film Center Serbia at the Fest Forward Film Festival in Belgrade, as well as the Serbia and Golden Prometheus Awards at the Tbilisi Film Festival.
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GLORY TO THE QUEEN
Catalog # EPF16043 ● ISBN: 978-1-933724-82-9 ● UPC: 6-82086-16043-6 ● NTSC
82 Minutes ● Copyright 2020 ● Georgian, Serbian, Russian, German, English, English Subtitles
Click here to buy DVD: $29.95
Click here to buy DVD w/ Public Performance Rights: $250
Click here to buy DSL and DVD w/ Public Performance Rights: $375
For purchase orders, to book screenings and for other inquiries, please contact:
Larry Rattner - larry@epfmedia.com