Bela
Sun 01 OctBela is the second film in Vladimir Barskiy’s 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.
As part of the 2023 London Georgian Black Sea Film Festival
Special screening
Film introduced by Georgian actor Natalia Jugheli with live piano accompaniment by John Sweeney
About the director
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.
See also