Peleshyan’s secret is in being genius: Pietro Marcello

YEREVAN, JULY 11, ARMENPRESS: The documentary film, telling about the life and activities of the Armenian renowned film director Artavazd Peleshyan, Peleshyan’s Silence is among the documentaries presented at the 10th Golden Apricot Yerevan International Film Festival. As the Armenpress correspondent was reported by the director of the film Pietro Marcello, Peleshyan’s Silenceportrays a memory - a memory of his films and of their creation, a memory of cinema and of its relation with mankind, with its life, its mind, its emotions and with the unceasing, endless paths that intertwine one with the other. According to him, seeing the Artavazd Peleshyan’s films for the first time years ago, Pietro Marcello understood that Peleshyan is the master of his work for the different generations of film producers. “I consider Peleshyan to be one of my teachers. I met with him in Moscow. I think I have done my best in the film, presenting it not as a film but the Peleshyan’s portrait”, - said the director of the film Pietro Marcello.

“In reality there are no secrets in his silence. Peleshyan is a great film director, a great genius. His secret is in his being a genius”, - said Pietro Marcello. He told that after seeing Peleshyan he wanted to come to Armenia very much and has done it in the framework of the 10th Golden Apricot Yerevan International Film Festival.

Pietro Marcello is impressed by the Golden Apricot and considers it to be a wonderful festival. The world premiere of the Peleshyan’s Silence documentary took place in September 2011.

The film was rewarded with a special award of the Armenia's National Film Center at Hayak Awards in 2013 and was presented at different film festivals. On July 10 the Peleshyan’s Silence was screened at the Tumo Center for Creative Technologies.

On July 11 at 19:30 at the Red Hall of the Moscow Cinema the retrospective screening of Artavazd Peleshyan’s films will be presented.

Artavazd Ashoti Peleshyan(born February 22, 1938,Leninakan) is anArmeniandirector of film-essays, a documentarian in the history of film art, and a film theorist. However, his work, unlike Maya Deren's, is neitheravant-garde, nor does it try to explore theabsurd. It is also not really art for art's sake, like the work of Stan Brakhage, for instance, but is generally acknowledged, rather, as a poetic view of life transferred onto film.

In the words of the filmmaker Sergei Parajanov, Peleshyan is "one of the few authentic geniuses in the world of cinema".

He is renowned for developing a style of cinematographic perspective known asdistance montage, combining perception of depth with oncoming entities, such as running packs of antelope or hordes of humans. He has always made extensive use of archive footage, mixed in with his own shots, with fast inter-cutting between the two.Telephoto lensesare often used to get "candid camera" shots of people engaging in mundane tasks.

His films are on the border between documentary and feature, somewhat reminiscent of the work of such avant-garde filmmakers asBruce Connor, rather than of conventional documentaries. Most of his films are short, ranging from a mere 6 minutes long up to about 60 minutes long. They feature no dialogue. However, music and sound effects play nearly as important a role in his films as the visual images in contributing towards the artistic whole. Nearly all of his films were shot in black and white.

His early films, made he was still a student atVGIK, were awarded several prizes. To date, 12 films by Peleshyan are known to exist.The Beginning(Skizbe) (1967) is a cinematographical essay about theOctober Revolutionof 1917. One of the unique visual effects used in this film is achieved by holding snippets of film still on a single frame, then advancing only for a second or two before again pausing on another, resulting in a stuttering visual effect. Other important films by him areWe(Menq) (1967, a poetically told history of Armenia and its people, andInhabitant(Obitateli) (1970), a reflection on the relationship between wildlife and humans. Artavazd Peleshyan’s most brilliant film is considered, by many critics, to beThe Seasons of the Year(1975). Exquisitely shot by cinematographerMikhail Vartanov, it is an outstanding look at the contradiction and harmony between humans and nature. It was the last collaboration between Peleshyan and Vartanov, Armenia's two most important documentary auteurs; they first worked together onThe Autumn Pastoral(1971).

Peleshyan is also the author of a range of theoretical works, such as his 1988 book,Moyo kino(My Cinema).

Being from a country far away from internationally significant cinema circles, Peleshyan's efforts were not properly recognized by critics ofworld cinemauntil very recently. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, he has been able to make two more short films,Life(1993) andThe End(1994). He is now living in Moscow. His most recent film was edited at the ZKM | Karlsruhe Film Institute in 2005-2006 and has not yet been released.