“Meetings with remarkable people” – artistic film

Georgy Ivanovich Ghiurdjiev was a well-known Greek philosopher, pedagogue, choreographer and composer, who later settled in France. The spiritual movement that he initiated is known as the “Fourth Way“, and was continued by his disciple P.D. Ouspensky.

Georgy Ivanovich Ghiurdjiev was born on a controversial date (most likely between 1866 and 1872) in the Greek quarter of Alexandrupol (today Gyumri) in the Russian part of Armenia, from a father of Greek origin and a mother of Armenian origin. Not many details are known about his childhood and youth. It seems that under the influence of his father a famous Ashokh (traditional storyteller) and Father Borsh, a true mentor who was preparing him to become at the same time “a doctor of the body and a priest of the soul”, they were decisive in his formation. In parallel with the preparation for the career of a priest and that of a doctor, the young man proved real technical qualities, his abilities to manufacture or repair various objects, allowing him to earn money from an early age.

However Gurdjieff did not become a doctor, a priest, nor an engineer. A series of strange events that took place in the cosmopolitan environment represented by the Caucasian lands of his childhood, influenced him in choosing the route he would follow in this life.

Thus, Gurdjieff embarked on a journey that would last almost twenty years, going through Central Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East to find there the living sources of a hidden knowledge.

Shortly before the First World War, in 1913 he returned to Moscow, where he began to gather around him a group of disciples. During the revolution, he continued his work, went to Essentuki in the Caucasus, with a small group of disciples, who followed him to Tiflis, then to Constantinople, Berlin and London.

Finally, in 1922, he installed himself in France, at prieuré castle, near Fontainebleau, to establish there, on a fairly large scale, the “Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man”.

After a first trip to the United States of America in 1924, a serious car accident interrupted him the implementation of the projects he was working on.

After it is restored, he decides to devote himself entirely to writing, following this work for a period of ten years. From this era dates back:
Belzebuth’s stories to his nephew, Encounters with remarkable people
, as well as sketches of the third serpent entitled
Life is not real until “I am”.

By the end of his life, he would direct his entire activity towards an intense work with his students, namely those from Paris, during the Second World War, and then with all those who had come from all over the world to meet him in France. He died in Paris on October 29, 1949.