Format: Super8 transferred to HD
Duration: 8mins15secs
Direction/Editing: Kamila Kuc
Cast: Genie Kaminski
Second camera: Nina Zabicka
Sound: Rob Godman
Voice: Genie Kaminski
Still photography: Kamila Kuc/Daisy Rickman 

Batum begins with an experience of nearly drowning in the Black Sea in Batumi, Georgia, unfolding as an auto-ethnographic exploration of memory and identity. The film weaves together personal and prosthetic memories, drawing on historical and cultural references, including the poetry of Osip Mandelstam and Joseph Stalin. It examines how memories become fiction through the act of recording, how the camera acquires its own agency, and how personal and collective memories complicate social and political constructions of identity. Ultimately, Batum reflects on film itself as a technology that not only preserves memory but also creates it.

Award Nominations
Bucharest Shortcut Cinefest, Bucharest, Romania. Nominated for Best Experimental film.
Creative Arts Film Festival, New York City, NY. Nominated for Best Cinematography and Best Experimental Film.

Screenings:
Anthology Film Archives, New York City, NY
The Horse Hospital, Visual Chorus, London, UK
Ann Arbor Film Festival, Ann Arbor, MI
BEAST International Film Festival, Porto, Portugal
Montreal Underground Film Festival, Montreal, Canada
The West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival, Morgantown, VA
Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, Hawick, Scotland
ICA, London, UK
London Short Film Festival, London, UK
Creative Arts Film Festival, New York City, NY. Nominated for Best Cinematography and Best Experimental Film
London Experimental Film Festival, London, UK
Austin Polish Film Festival, solo screening with I Think You Should Come to America and Fluchtpunkt, Austin, TX
Genesis Cinema, London, UK
Museum for Human Achievement, Austin, TX
Grand Illusion Cinema, Seattle, WA
Experiments in Cinema, Albuquerque, NM
Bucharest Shortcut Cinefest, Bucharest, Romania. Nominated for Best Experimental film

For an essay about the themes explored in Batum, see 'Ciné, ma vérité: Memory as a Creative Force in the Process of Constructing Subjectivities', Experiments in She-ness: Women and Undependent Cinema (Albuquerque: Basement Films, 2016).

See also Filming Batum.