bob the moo
This film looks at the challenges associated with trying to take a country with no money, corruption and an aged, collapsing infrastructure and make it function as a "proper" country. It looks at this by using the provision of electricity within Georgia by American company AES as an example. The end result is a rather mixed film that enlightens on the wider subject while never really getting a handle on it.Part of the problem is that the film sits too closely to the couple of people it knows within AES. Why it does this is perhaps understandable – the connection between director Devlin and AES employee Piers Lewis they speak English, they are amusing/interesting characters, they provided access that the other groups did not etc; but the outcome is that the film does appear to be very much on the AES side of the table and that perhaps too much of the film is being presented with a sense of "good feeling" towards AES that other groups are not rewarded. Had the film spent less time hanging out with Lewis and the specific frustrations of AES then maybe it could have done better, but at times the film feels like it easily could have been sponsored by AES. This isn't helped by the fact that the film nary has a bad word to say about AES – not even when the management brags about shutting off power to an airport while a plane was coming in to land.Despite this failing (and it is a failing) though, the film is still very interesting in the bigger picture and whenever it has scenes where AES are just one of many players in the story then the subject comes through – that is the challenge of what they are trying to do. Here is where the film should have spent more time but surprisingly things like specific acts of murder and corruption are just mentioned rather than explored or discussed. Compare this to the amount of time we get to spend with AES looking at unsafe or damaged electrical equipment and you do get the feeling that Devlin is missing the bigger picture.As a short film for a viewer taking a first look at Georgia then it is interesting enough in the sweep that the irritations in the detail can be mostly forgiven but it does seem that Devlin is pulled in his delivery. He was drawn to this story via Lewis and did set out specifically to look at the experience of AES trying to do what they do, however where he sees the bigger picture he knows he should focus on that by way of AES as a device but yet always seems hesitant to do so. Overall then this is an interesting film that could easily have been twice as long and still engage but I do not think Devlin is the man to tell it and I think the proximity to AES that initially helps him ultimately hinders the development and delivery of the film.
williams-bd
Nothing too funny about this one. A lot of it is rather tragic actually. It gives us a glimpse of the difficulties these former Soviet citizens are facing as their states continue to transition. Of all the transitions that must be made, electricity seems like a rather small one, but as the film shows it still has an enormous impact. I don't believe the film was corporate propaganda but it offers no criticism of how AES handled the situation. Likewise, the corruption it does depict is located in the Geogian Ministry.Beyond the whole electricity/post Soviet theme, there is some decent exposure to the Georgian people and landscape. Watch out for a few brutal images of a murdered man and an electrified man.
David Ferguson
Greetings again from the darkness. And this time I mean darkness in the literal sense. What an excellent glimpse into the real process of transitioning a country from socialism to capitalism. Make no mistake, this process is tedious and painful for everyone involved. Some get rich, most suffer tremendously. This documentary is centered on the world of electricity in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. The politics and power struggles cause nothing but frustration, confusion and darkness for the citizens. One of the citizens speaks of the feeling of oppression from living helplessly without electricity because the electric bill is more than a months pay. As a viewer we feel this oppression and frustration from the comfort of a heated theatre with plush seats. This movie reminds me of how lucky I am to live in the U.S. and how so many struggle with the basics of everyday life - things I take for granted. My only complaint is how the film glosses over the real (alleged) ties to Enron with the management of AES. No matter, the points are made and in contrast to most documentaries, Mr. Devlin does not attempt to force his views on us. He presents the picture and allows our minds to experience the frustration of not providing a solution. Tough issues that at times border on a lack of humanity. Powerful stuff.
Chris Knipp
Paul Devlin's Power Trip was presented at Film Forum in New York in December 2003. At the December 17 evening showing the filmmaker spoke and answered questions afterward. Devlin is an American who has done sports coverage for the major networks and made a 1995 (revised 1998) documentary -- it was also an attempted TV pilot -- on the live poetry competitions called `slams.' In the mid-Nineties a British pal from college, Piers Lewis, urged Devlin to come and visit in Georgia, former USSR, where Lewis was working for the AES Corporation of Arlington, Virginia. AES was running -- an operation, shall we say? -- to turn the state owned electrical system of the country into a private business whose users, both public and private, would be registered and have to pay for their use on a monthly basis. Once Devlin was there the irrepressible Mr. Lewis, a young man of considerable enthusiasm and skill who at first was a major force behind AES's work in Georgia, insisted on being filmed talking about the project and the country. He urged Devlin to begin a serious documentary film about AES's efforts in Georgia, and Devlin did. Devlin kept his own representative filming in the country and made periodic visits over a period of about five years to see how AES-Telasi, the Georgian branch, was doing. Which was not well. Ultimately US financial debacles and the Enron scandal and his own scandalous filtering of company funds into a Christian prostelytizing campaign caused Dennis Bakke, the head of the huge international electrical conglomerate that is AES, to resign. Stockholders forced AES to give up Georgia and sell power rights to the Russians for a pittance. AES did so after throwing $200 million at the long-term problems its Georgian project presented. Bakke's personal money-filtering scandal isn't mentioned by the film. But were AES's intentions in Georgia admirable? It would seem so. Was its way of working in Georgia misguided? Undoubtedly. Power Trip is lucid coverage of a chaotic situation. To begin with, Georgians were used to free electricity under the Soviet system. The new $24 monthly fee was a huge chunk out of their meager incomes, and they generally refused to pay it. At first they simply made crude patches into local power outlets, creating a disastrous mess and also frequently electrocuting themselves in the process. Even major institutions like the airport and the train station didn't pay what they owed, and AES began cutoffs to force payment, which led to more of the usual state corruption, as well as to assassinations and demonstrations in the street. Nonetheless Lewis and the other AES employees made gradual progress. Georgia is by no means just an offshoot or loyal retainer of Russia. It has its own impenetrable terrain and a sense of fierce independence to go with it. It also has its own language, and its own peculiar writing system, which looks a bit like Armenian, or the written form of Amharic, the language of Ethiopia. Aside from the general chaos and civil war the country is extremely corrupt, maybe no more so than Russia but poorer, more mountainous, rugged, and isolated. Georgians have a tendency to do things the way they want, ignoring the rules. It's no surprise that the minister of power doled out free electricity to his cronies and that the locals smashed the meters they were assigned. The film amply covers these events, and the individuals involved, first hand. There seems to have been a huge cultural gap here. It was the old American error of expecting foreigners to snap to and gratefully adopt our system and indeed our whole culture. AES solved its problems not so much by working with people (they lacked the appropriate staff, though Lewis learned the language and was willing to engage frequently with angry crowds in the street) but by throwing money at them. Devlin does a fine job of sketching in a portrait of Georgia's unique ways and history and the situation there while AES was making its overhasty reform efforts. It seems that the corporation's Virginia-based CEO saw himself as spearheading a sort of gigantic Peace Corps operation. By making the electrical company profitable he might indeed have helped stabilize the country and pay off some of its debts. Since the USSR is no longer a going operation, there has to be a substitute for pure state ownership; but surely slow compromises have to be worked out, rather than the rapid changeover AES-Telasi had in mind. Bakke may have meant well; but his efforts were a spectacular failure. The trouble was impatience, vast naivety, and too much cash on hand: the temptation just to buy out a local power station if the power wasn't being delivered as expected was too strong to resist when AES had such deep pockets. Unfortunately the problems were too manifold and complex to be solved by a few payments, buyouts, or donations. Devlin's presentation is admirably unbiased and un-deterministic. We don't know where things are going ahead of time; they just unfold and devolve. The film manages a juggling act of describing Piers Lewis's job vicissitudes as various company executives are replaced; the ups and downs of AES-Telasi; and turbulent events in the country; and the whole cultural and historical background, without ever losing the story's momentum or our interest.
It may be a little inappropriate to the spirit of the film to draw moralistic conclusions, but it's hard not to draw some. AES-Telasi wasn't the sort of cynical operation Halliburton, Bechtel, and Bush's corporate cronies are undertaking in Iraq, but Power Trip tends to show that globalization is futile as well as exploitative. All the conclusions to be drawn aren't really clear, and that's why there was a lively discussion with Devlin at Film Forum. What is clear is that Power Trip has an important subject and deals with it in a fresh way. We need a lot more stuff like this; more Piers Lewises to lure Americans abroad with digital video cameras and open minds. Power Trip is another in the wave of great documentaries that appeared at the end of 2003. It's undistributed but many individual screenings are scheduled in the US and worldwide (as well as on HBO Latin America) for the coming months: for the schedule see the film's website.
