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Director: Paul
Devlin 2003 83 Minutes USA Editor: Paul Devlin
Producers: Paul Devlin, Valery Odikadze, Claire Missanelli
Photography: Paul Devlin, Valery Odikadze Sound: Benny
Mouthon, Matt Haasch, Pat Donahue In English and Georgian with
English subtitles
With Piers Lewis Michael Scholey
Festivals: Berlin 2003
A remarkably colourful and absorbing documentary, Power
Trip takes us to the former Soviet Republic of Georgia where
AES, a multinational conglomerate based in Virginia, has bought into
the recently privatised business of electricity supply. First task:
persuade consumers accustomed to getting their power for free to
part with half their incomes to pay for it. Second task: deal with
riots. Next, dismantle countless homemade wiring systems, detect
elaborate power diversion mechanisms and install meters… The
obstacles to commercial success pile up on each other like an
escalating absurdist nightmare that takes us into the highest
echelons of political power and corruption. The Americans are
ruefully aware of the comic aspect of their enterprise and you have
to admire their stickability. Director Paul Devlin also chronicles
the attempts by Georgians, high and low, to deal with a radically
changed world. His people-centred account of a social and economic
disaster is impressively non-judgmental – and it’s certainly an
entertaining distraction from our own power crisis. |
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