Armenian cinema in focus in New York City

This fall saw three events shine a spotlight on Armenian cinema across New York City, each with different aims and scopes. For just over two weeks in September and October, the 64th New York Film Festival (NYFF64) took place at Lincoln Center. While the premiere of “You Can See Everything,” Nathan Fielder’s documentary on Elizabeth Holmes (which features a score by Ari Balouzian), garnered most of the headlines, the festival stood out for another reason. NYFF64 presented two programs of films by Armenian director Artavazd Pelechian, “a figure of cultish devotion but still too little known in the U.S.” The screenings featured films restored under Pelechian’s direct supervision and having either their North American or U.S. premiere in new 4K restorations. The programs highlighted his unique style of storytelling through montage, his focus on everyday laborers and his impactful use of music. With an introduction by NYFF64 Revivals Programmer Gina Telaroli, “Pelechian Project Program 1” began with “Mountain Patrol,” a short film from 1964 that depicts workers clearing a train’s path through the mountains. Pelechian draws on the repetitive, natural rhythms of the world, syncing the rhythmic beat of the score, the rolling of the train and the steady fall of rain. “Land of the People,” a short film from 1966, is a highly stylized work in which Pelechian experiments with movement and sound. A spinning camera and varying angles are coupled with seemingly random sound effects as he toys with the audience’s perspective. Pelechian contrasts ways of life by transitioning from the padded gloves of a boxer to the rugged gloves of a construction worker, the lacy gloves of a socialite and the sterile gloves of a doctor. The 1969 short film “We” is a reflection on the trauma of the Armenian people, depicting crumbling mountains, a mass funeral, a pilgrimage and a symphony of explosions. The Program ended with “The Seasons,” a 1975 short film. “The Seasons” takes its name from Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons,” which serves as the score to show how the life and work of an Armenian farming community are impacted by each season. Ranchers drive sheep and cattle across perilous rivers; farmers harvest wheat in a synchronous fashion; women make string cheese; and a young couple gets married. Through rain, snow, or heat, the work must get done. “Pelechian Project Program 2” followed a similar theme in its curation of Pelechian’s short films “The Beginning” (1967), “The End” (1992) and “Life” (1993), as well as his feature film “Our Century” (1982). On Sept. 16, Garod Collective presented a series of short films at BAM in Brooklyn. “Posthumous Traces” brought together five short films, all by Armenian women, exploring grief and loss through the themes of family, parenthood and identity. The evening began with the New York premiere of Anahid Yahjian’s “Domestic Demon.” Released this year, the film employs shadow figures and silhouettes, colorful symbolism and unexpected sounds to express a new mother’s feelings of being trapped. Narrated in Western Armenian, one line that encapsulates her experience is, “At night, I feel like myself again.” Yahjian was also in attendance and participated in a Q&A after the screenings. She described “Domestic Demon” as being about her “first time being a mother during COVID and experiencing PPD (postpartum depression).” She said, “It’s about the feeling of being trapped in a house and the trap of domesticity.” Yahjian also reflected on the choice to include narration in Western Armenian. She said, “Western Armenian is the language I was mothered in and the language I’m now mothering in…It’s rare to see Western Armenian in film, in new creative endeavors.” In “Girl from Moush,” from 1994, Garine Torossian uses a style similar to Pelechian’s to explore her feelings about being Armenian. In a series of montages, Torossian showcases traditional Armenian iconography, music, sights, sounds and people: a compilation of churches, zurnas, duduks, Tsitsernakaberd, ouds, Parajanov, Lake Sevan, Sayat Nova and more. Torossian ends with her thesis: “I’ve never been to Armenia, but I always feel it with me.” Naira Sargsyan’s 2020 film “General Cleaning” depicts a quaint Armenian family in a village. At first, they exhibit familiar family dynamics: The grandfather lives with his children and grandchildren; the mother prepares dinner; the father helps the son with homework once he gets home from work; and the brother and sister argue as they sit at the table. But soon, we see just how isolated the grandfather feels and how little his own family respects him. The 2004 film “Farewell” is a highly stylized and artistic work by Maria Saakyan, who seeks to understand and imagine the life of the father she lost to suicide. The film was Saakyan’s thesis while attending the world’s oldest professional film school, Vsesoyuznyi Gosudarstvenyi Institut Kinematografii (VGIK) in Moscow. Yahjian described the film as a meditation on Saakyan’s loss of her father at a young age. She also credited Saakyan with showing how wanting to be a mother isn’t at odds with wanting to be an artist; you can be both and don’t have to compromise one for the other. Christine Haroutounian’s 2020 film “World” is an intimate portrayal of a relationship between mother and daughter. The newly engaged daughter seems to resent having to take care of her dying mother and practically wishes for her death so she can get on with her own life. However, once her mother dies, she doesn’t know what to do with herself. Another of Haroutounian’s films was showcased about a month later, during the weekend of Oct. 23, at the Asia Society on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. “Our Century: Spiraling Paths Through Armenian Cinema” was a program of five films by Armenian filmmakers, united by themes of movement, displacement and belonging. The series was guest-curated by Sona Karapoghosyan, a film programmer for the Golden Apricot International Film Festival. “Our Century” included screenings of Frunze Dovlatyan’s 1966 feature film “Hello, It’s Me,” Atom Egoyan’s 1993 feature film “Calendar,” Arby Ovanessian’s short film “Lebbeus/Thaddeus,” Harutyun Kahachatryan and Nora Armani’s 1994 feature film “Last Station,” and Christine Haroutounian’s 2025 feature film “After Dreaming.” “After Dreaming” follows the story of Atom, a soldier who is charged with taking Claudette, a young woman, away from home to avoid her father’s funeral. It’s a road movie in which Atom and Claudette embark on a physical and emotional journey away from their village. The film opens on a pastoral scene of a white horse drinking water in a lake. Quiet, simple and serene, the camera gently turns to a well-digger, who slowly comes into focus as he is confronted by paranoid locals. The film maintains a soft focus throughout, giving it a gauzy, “dream-like quality” reminiscent of Hollywood’s Golden Age. A striking scene in the film occurs after the mass wedding in Artsakh. The newlyweds are celebrated with a performance by a traditional Armenian wedding band in an extended sequence of high energy and volume that provides a sharp contrast to the film’s soft, subtle nature. Following the screening, Haroutounian participated in a Q&A with film critic Vadim Rizov. She said she started writing the screenplay in 2020, before the Second Artsakh War began, and characterized the film as “about the negative space of the conflict.” Haroutounian also described the political challenges of filming the wedding scene, shooting near a nuclear reactor and trying to avoid the entire southern region of Armenia for the safety of the cast and crew. Although the mass wedding in Artsakh took place in 2008 in real life, she did not set the film in a specific year. She wanted to explore the “circular nature of time…those feelings of timelessness and confusion — all of that was intentional.” These film events demonstrate the history of Armenian cinema and the diversity of the Armenian experience. Spanning decades, geographies, languages, styles and themes, the selected films are still just a taste of the vast world of Armenian cinema. Events like these make that world more accessible to all.

Armenian cinema in focus in New York City

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Rosie (Toumanian) Nisanyan

This story is FREE for you...

Rosie (Toumanian) Nisanyan

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