When the Lights Went Out in Georgia
Thursday, January 22, 2004; Page WE38
After the Soviet Union's collapse, an American corporation arrives in one of Moscow's poorer former satellites and privatizes an essential commodity of modern life: electricity. That sounds like the blueprint for a capitalist outrage, but director-producer-editor Paul Devlin's documentary, "Power Trip," finds something more complicated. Arlington-based AES, which took control of Georgia's electrical company in 1999, is no Enron. As the company's then-CEO Paul Bakke says in the film, AES expanded into impoverished countries "to serve the world." Indeed, the film's featured player is a long-haired do-gooder, Piers Lewis, who had never worked for a multinational corporation before he switched from studying Georgia's electrical problems to trying to fix them. (The London-born Lewis is also Devlin's former college roommate, which explains the film's genesis.)
At first, the problem seems simple enough: AES was trying to sell to people who had no money. Lewis estimated that 40 percent of AES's customers were stealing electricity, and in some areas about 90 percent ignored their bills. AES began shutting off deadbeats, leading to angry confrontations and more attempts to divert power -- sometimes with grisly results. But the problem wasn't just with residential customers. AES struggled to get major industries, the Georgian army and even Tbilisi's airport to pay its bills, and contended with both gangsters and disgruntled patriots who considered "the Americans" just a new version of "the Russians."
"Power Trip" is an intriguing introduction to Georgia -- complete with an all-Georgian soundtrack -- and features a colorful (and mostly English-speaking) cast. It's also an instructive account of the perils of attempting to privatize decrepit public utilities in countries with stagnant economies. But Devlin sometimes underplays the story's context, relegating crucial information to fleeting on-screen text. And the film needs an epilogue noting two changes that occurred in Georgia last year: Allegedly corrupt President Eduard Shevardnadze resigned, and AES sold the national power company to a Russian firm. -- Mark Jenkins
POWER TRIP (Unrated, 86 minutes) --Contains graphic depictions of the bodies of electrocuted and murdered men. Visions Bar Noir.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
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