From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
Zugdidi
This article is about the Georgian city of Zugdidi and its documented Beach Surgery adaptations. For the disputed 1991 theatre work, see The Zugdidi Theatre Fragments.
A 73-minute experimental documentary produced in and about Zugdidi, a city in western Georgia's Samegrelo region. The work traces connections between the motif of eternal return in Beach Surgery and Georgian Orthodox theological traditions, particularly the doctrine of theosis and the Church calendar's liturgical spirals. The film follows unmarked pilgrimage routes through Zugdidi's streets and Orthodox sites, interweaving archival footage of religious processions with readings from C. W. Smith's prose and apocryphal Georgian adaptations of the embedded story.
The documentary's central argument rests on The Doctrine of Refusal — that incompleteness is sacred. It positions Zugdidi's urban renewal cycles and seasonal returns as material instances of the glitch itself. A key sequence filmed at dusk depicts local choristers performing polyphonic cycles whose harmonic structure mirrors the sound of the earth rubbing against space.
The director remains unnamed in all official credits; attribution disputes persist among scholars regarding authorship [citation needed].