The invisible hand of my father
>> at the Ojārs Vācietis Museum
The source of this film is the personal life of Gago’s father, Nugzari, and his right hand. The film traces the physical and the symbolic transition of his right hand: how the transition has been affecting his socio- economic life in his journey through out different political ideologies that are represented and governed by symbolic hands: from the Soviet Union – whose ideology claimed that its political body was governed by “the collective hand of the workers”; to global capitalism – the economic structure of which is “regulated” by “the invisible hand of the free market”.
Nugzari was born in 1953, in Soviet Georgia. 2008 – this year will be remembered as the moment that the financial crisis hit nations around the globe. As if it was following this economic crash, Nugzari’s right hand, which was his essential labour tool and the labour of which was the main source of income for his family, also vanished from sight. In August 2008, Nugzari had an accident while working. His right hand was dragged, twisted, and torn away by a concrete mixer. As a result, he returned to Georgia and with the support of a monthly disability pension that he receives from Portugal, he currently lives in a 100 year old family summer house in Racha in the Caucasus.
The film follows the visible traces of the invisible hand of Nugzari, contextualizing and examining them in order to comprehend the governing logic of his “absent hand”. The hand that created new labour conditions in his life by turning itself into the main provider of wealth, leisure and social stability – started to manage the economy of the family.