CITIZEN KANE screening at FOMO Cinema Tbilisi

Orson Welles | 1941 | USA | 1h59m | Presented in the original English audio with English subtitles

CITIZEN KANE is one of the few films whose reputation is fully deserved. Orson Welles was only twenty-five when he made it, and he arrived in Hollywood with an amount of freedom almost no first-time filmmaker has ever been given. What he did with that freedom still feels astonishing. On the surface the film follows the investigation that begins after Charles Foster Kane dies uttering the word “Rosebud,” with reporters trying to piece together what it meant and who Kane really was. Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz use that search to build a portrait of power, vanity, loneliness and self-invention out of conflicting testimony and broken memory.

The film’s place in cinema history comes from form as much as story. Working with cinematographer Gregg Toland, Welles pushed deep focus, low angles, ceilings, overlapping sound and fractured chronology into a new kind of expressive system. CITIZEN KANE does not simply tell a story well. It changes the way a story can be organised on screen. Its structure moves backward and sideways. Its images create scale, distance and entrapment at the same time. The production lore matters too. William Randolph Hearst, one of the most powerful newspaper magnates in American history, saw too much of himself in Kane. Hearst’s vast press empire, political influence and grand personal mythology made the resemblance difficult to miss, and his efforts to suppress the film only deepened its legend.

CITIZEN KANE treats American success as a tragedy of accumulation. Kane acquires money, influence, objects, property, headlines and political reach, yet the film keeps stripping away the grandeur to reveal someone more isolated each time we return to him. Welles never turns him into a simple monster or a noble failure. He remains larger than anyone’s explanation of him. For all its technical daring, CITIZEN KANE understands that public myth and private emptiness often grow together. Few debuts in cinema history have ever been this confident, this inventive or this lasting.

FOOD AND DRINK POLICY: FOMO Cinema Lounge Bar opens 1 hour before the first screening of the day and closes at 02:00,.serving a wide selection of beer, wine, cocktails, and non-alcoholic refreshments including coffee and tea, as well as fresh hot popcorn! Outside food is allowed in the bar but not in the cinema. No alcohol from outside allowed. All guests are invited to arrive early and stay late!

LOCATION: FOMO Secret Cinema, Bazari Orbeliani, Tbilisi. A five minute walk from Liberty Square metro.

HOW TO FIND FOMO: Enter Bazari Orbeliani via Atoneli St above Carrefour and take the stairs on your left to the first floor. You can also check our Instagram story highlights for a video showing exactly how to find us:
https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17933106294029235/