Cinema
ოცდაექვსი კომისარი
Nikoloz Shengelaia · 1932
Synopsis
Baku, 1918. The city is encircled by British and German-Turkish troops, cut off from Soviet Russia and caught in a blockade. The leaders of the Baku Soviet cede power to the interventionists, and twenty-six of them are arrested. They are put on board and taken across the Caspian, and the train carrying them goes deep into the Transcaspian desert.
Context
The episode was erected by the Soviet authorities into a founding martyrdom and represented in all the arts for sixty years. The film was shot in 1932 and 1933 with Stepan Kevorkov as co-signatory, from a screenplay written with Alexander Rzheshevsky, and produced by the Goskinprom of Georgia with Azerkino; the premiere took place in Moscow in February 1933. Its author, who came from futurism, used an editing style inspired by Eisenstein, and the press of the time judged the project grandiose, calling it the Balzac of cinema.
Who it is for
A late silent film, in Georgian, for which a sound version made later circulates. It helps to know that the civil war in the Caucasus and the political use of this episode shed light on everything one sees.
Prizes and reception
Nothing is documented about its public reception, but the film remains one of the rare witnesses of Georgian montage before the clampdown of the thirties.