Arsen Georgiashvili was the first title produced by the film section of the Narkompros, the future Goskinprom of Georgia. The film focused on one of the first heroes of the revolutionary pantheon of Soviet Georgia, the railway depot worker Arsen Georgiashvili, executed in 1906 for attempting to assassinate the chief of staff of the Caucasian Military District, General Gryaznov. Director Ivan Perestiani’s style, with its well-constructed sequences and masterly changes of shots on different levels, relied heavily on his previous experiences as an actor and screenwriter in the films of Yevgeni Bauer, the best director of Khanzhonkov’s company.

Valentin Turkin, a prominent critic, film theorist, screenwriter and future professor of VGIK described Perestiani as “the first film artist who has done an excellent job in recent years”. Perestiani hired leading lights of the Georgian theatre for this film: Vaso Abashidze, Elisabed Cherkezishvili, Valerian Gunia, Aleksandre Imedashvili.

Arsen Georgiashvili was also the film debut of Mikheil Chiaureli, an artist, sculptor and actor who attended the school of Giorgi Jabadari (himself a student of the French theatre reformer André Antoine), and later directed the main instrumental films of the Stalin era: The Vow, The Fall of Berlin and The Unforgettable Year 1919.

Yevgeni Margolit