By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Paul Devlin
Country: georgia, united_states
Year: 2004
Running time: 86
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0358647/combined
Bruce says: “At the beginning of POWER TRIP I thought I would be seeing another tale of a greedy American corporation taking advantage of citizens in the economically depressed and politically chaotic state of Georgia. That was a false assumption on my part. The film is about the aborted efforts by AES Corporation to merge into the culture of Tbilisi, Georgia – a city of 1,225,000 people – and the obstacles they faced. When AES bought the utility from the government of Georgia at the beginning
of 1999, the company had little knowledge of Georgian history and day-to-day life. Initially, employees of AES seem haughty and condescending as they are interviewed. It is not until the last third of the film that the viewer gets a sense of what has been going on.
“Forgotten after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and a civil war which ripped Georgia to shreds in the years immediately following, the Georgians learned how to take matters into their own hand when things need to get done. Whole subdivisions, the equivalent of suburbs, were abandoned by the Soviets and are now occupied by squatters. In 1999 most of the electrical connections were haphazard homemade hookups tapping current from the main lines for homes and small businesses. At that time, 90% of the population that received electricity did not pay any utility bills.
“Georgia has a two-tiered society: a class comprised of the newly educated who usually speak English and carry laptops and the balance of the population which is more or less the peasant class. That is not to say the latter group is stupid or lazy. Both AES and the viewer come to learn that the people of Georgia are energetic, motivated, skillful and resourceful. Many in Tbilisi speak five languages. Yet, something is very rotten in Georgia. The government has a history of a ‘mobster mentality’ understandably
the result when government Ministers make $75 per month. An income of that proportion absolutely begs to be supplemented. AES slowly discovered that by Ministry decree all of the major users of electricity – the industries, the police, the military, the subway system – did not pay for any electricity at all. The broken down, decrepit conditions in Georgia are a result of the infrastructure which is mired in bribery, corruption, theft, kidnapping and election tampering.
“AES spent millions to update the distribution channels by rewiring and installing meters and to establish a solid computerized base for their accounts receivable. To no avail. The corporation which behaved admirably by placing social responsibility above making windfall profits finally sold its holdings to a Russian utility after the CEO, Dennis Bakke, was ousted by shareholders. For a refreshing change the corporation turned out to be the ‘good guy.’
“The facts vary but the theme of POWER TRIP is reminiscent of Arundhati Roy’s Power Politics where she tells the story of how Enron wins a $30 billion dollar energy contract in a province of India then charges the people twice the rate of its nearest competitor and seven times the rate of the cheapest energy source. Enron never used the words bribery; the millions Enron paid out before contracts were signed were spent for ‘educating’ the people of India. Roy states that most power deals involve ‘moving
assets from the bribe-givers to the bribe-takers.’ As in Georgia, although no one is held accountable, it is the people who suffer the economic loss and degradation of service. 3.5 cats”