Mariami Basharadze

"Chakrulo, The Song That Left Earth" is based on a true story: in 1977 NASA chose a Georgian folk song, Chakrulo, to represent humanity on the Voyager Golden Records 1 & 2. The film showcases the beauty of being human and moves from an intimate Georgian Supra table (feast) toasting to life, through the true story of how the recording reached NASA via Alan Lomax, to interstellar space and back to the same table, many years later, where the child who once watched her grandfather sing, is now the woman who remembers them. It ends where it began. The same table. The same song. Still being sung. Right now, as you read this, Chakrulo is travelling through interstellar space, 24B km away. It’s a centuries-old polyphonic folk song, recognised by UNESCO as a masterpiece of intangible cultural heritage. Still sung today at Georgian supra feasts, exactly as it was sung for centuries before. The Chakrulo recording used in this film is a 1957 public domain field recording, performed by different soloists than the version aboard Voyager. The exact 1977 recording - performed by Ilia Zakaidze and Rostom Saginashvili - remains under copyright and was not used for this video. This 1957 recording predates it and shares the same folk tradition, arrangement style, and regional origin - going back several centuries. As someone with Georgian roots, this is very close to my heart as Ilia Zakaidze also comes from my hometown where I was born. Built entirely with AI: a combination of Veo3, Flux and nano-banana2 via fal Assets, Preview.io for image-to-video sequencing, ElevenLabs for narration. Claude AI served as creative director throughout - developing structure, historical research, and prompt craft across 70+ generations and CapCut putting everything together.

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