Bela Vladimir Barskiy
Bela 1927 Georgia
Bela|1927|Vladimir Barskiy|83mins|Georgia - Nikolai Prozorovsky, Tina Machavariani, Iliko Merabishvil
Vladimir Barskiy played Commander Golikov in Battleship Potemkin having started directing and acting in theatre in 1892. During the Georgian Democratic Socialist Republic (1918 -1921) he worked in the People’s House in Tbilisi, and then became director of the State Committee for Industry of Georgia. Bela is the second film in his trilogy based on Lermontov’s A Hero Of Our Time that he made in the 1920s in Georgia.
Against a backdrop of ravishing mountain scenery, the morally vacuous ‘hero’ Perochin, arrives at a mountain regiment near a Circassian village in the Caucasus. After a few months of agonising boredom, he is drawn to the youngest daughter of the Circassian prince, Bela. He hatches a plot with her brother Azamat to kidnap Bela. This remarkable film has just been restored by the National Archive of Georgia.
Live piano accompaniment by John Sweeney
Introduced by Natalia Jugheli
Newly restored print
2.00pm Sunday 1st October 2023
Cinema 1
Address
17 Queensberry Place
London SW7 2DT
London GB