Author: Emil Lazarian

When thinking of Armenian cinema, the names of Sergei Parajanov and Artavazd Peleshyan come to mind. These two titans are influential not only for Armenian or Soviet cinema but world film heritage. Both introduced unique storytelling methods—one infusing the screen with poetry and collaged images, the second conceiving of the “Distance Montage” technique. But Armenian cinema, which marks its 100th anniversary this year, has other notable filmmakers whose work deserves no less recognition. 

ArmenFilm (HayFilm), the first and main film production body of Armenia, was established in 1923 as a separate department within the People’s Commissariat of the Soviet Armenia. As in the Soviet Union as a whole, cinema was considered a tool for propaganda, so Daniel Dznuni, former head of propaganda in the People’s Commissariat for Education, was appointed its director. Young, ambitious and imbued with forbidden nationalist ideas, he planned to build his own little Hollywood in Yerevan. As the government had allocated very little funding for the department (60 rubles [30 USD, equivalent to 460 USD today]), the first step for the newly-appointed director was to raise money to start production. In a country eaten up by continuous wars against Turkey and the Red Army, with streets full of homeless orphans and survivors of the genocide, Dznuni managed to collect 5 million rubles for ArmenFilm and started producing. 

Dznuni had outlined four main roles for the company: production, “cinefication,” distribution and construction. With two cinemas were functioning in Armenia—in Yerevan and Gyumri, the country’s second major city—they first needed to build new cinemas (construction). While the production department was busy fighting censorship by rewriting, changing and adapting scripts to please Moscow, the “cinefication” section was responsible for bringing cinema closer to people. Hundreds of film clubs were established in cities and villages, and mobile screens and “cinemas on wheels” traveled around the country to make films accessible for everyone. 

By 1933, there were 110 screens available; the mission of the distribution section was to provide them with films. Besides distributing what was produced at ArmenFilm, the department was also purchasing theatrical rights for Russian and American films, screening them not only in Armenia but Iran. In cooperation with the Armenian church in Tehran, ArmenFilm was organizing screenings for the big Iranian-Armenian community and also for Iranians. Unsurprisingly, the government in Moscow was not fond of having such an independent body within its structure—soon, Dznuni was accused of promotion of nationalist ideas and waste of funds. He was put in jail, and although after several-year-lasting trials he was released was never allowed him to come back to ArmenFilm.

The first film produced by ArmenFilm was Soviet Armenia, a six-episode documentary series about quickly-developing Soviet Armenia. Propaganda praising communist norms, the film traveled around the world, including France, Lebanon, Egypt and other countries with dense Armenian populations. Currently, the film is considered to be lost. 

Namus

Dznuni was not only involved in executive arrangements but reading and commissioning scripts from famous Armenian playwrights and writers for new stories to be adapted for the screen. In 1925 he invited Hamo Bek-Nazaryan, who would become the founder of Armenian cinema, to work in ArmenFilm. An emerging filmmaker and celebrated silent-era actor of pre-revolutionary Russian cinema, in 1925 Bek-Nazaryan directed the first Armenian fiction film, Namus (Honor), followed by Zare (Zare) in 1926. Both challenged the patriarchal norms of Armenian society by telling stories of female characters who become victims of these norms, and both were shown widely internationally, even reaching New York. In Namus, Susan, the main character, is murdered by her husband who suspects her of unfaithfulness. In Zare, a Kurdish girl is forced to marry the influential governor of the region. Angry with her for refusing him, the governor announces that Zare is not “clean” and the villagers decide to kill her. Fortunately, the girl’s lover saves her life.

The thematic interests of Bek-Nazaryan were diverse and strategically well-planned. Mostly getting inspiration from the Armenian literature, along with Dznuni he was looking for narratives that would not bother the censorship authorities while, at the same time, addressing Armenian society and reshaping traditional perceptions. In addition to Armenian narratives, Bek-Nazaryan also collaborated with other Soviet countries, co-producing films with Azerbaijan (House on the Volcano, 1928) and Uzbekistan (Nasreddin in Khojent), making films about the ethnic minorities of Siberia (Igdendu, 1930), an Iranian villagers’ uprising (Khaspush, 1928). (The latter is included in the “Iranian Cinema before the Revolution, 1925- 1979” program currently at MoMA.) Some of his films were killed by Soviet censorship before or even during production. One of the most important ones, The Second Caravan, depicted the American-Armenian repatriates who decided to move to the Soviet Union to escape the “terror of capitalism” but, for unknown reasons, the production was halted on the last week of the filming. Until recently considered lost, the almost complete materials of the film were recently found in the film archive of Moscow. 

In general, confirmation and financing of film projects within the Soviet Union was a complicated and long process, requiring lots of dedication and energy. Filmmakers were supposed to submit their scripts to the Artistic Committee of ArmenFilm. With their green light, the project would be sent to Moscow for consideration. If confirmed, funds would be transferred and directors could start production. The filming stages were strictly outlined as well: pre-production in spring, production in summer, post-production in autumn, dubbing in winter. Usually, approvals and confirmations were received through good connections in the committees and the famous Armenian cognac. 

Along with Hamo Bek-Nazaryan, other directors producing silent cinema included Patvakan Barkhudaryan (Evil Soul, 1927; Kikos, 1931) and Amasi Martirosyan, whose Giqor (1934) is the last work of silent Armenian cinema. Most of the films were inspired or adapted from Armenian literature and were either comedies or dealing with social injustice, describing clashes between rich and poor, good and evil. The first sound film, Pepo (1936) was directed by Hamo Bek-Nazaryan and very much in line with the thematic interests of Armenian cinema, telling the story of a fisherman who fights against a greedy merchant. 

During the Second World War and years following it, film production went down. Lack of funding, loss of human resources on the front and the overall depressive mood left almost no space for creativity. One of the few directors to create on those years was still Bek-Nazaryan who chose to tell the epic stories from the past to raise the spirit of the nation (David Bek, 1943). But in the following ten years, only four films were produced by ArmenFilm.

The situation changed in the second half of the 1950s, when new and young voices started to appear on the cinema landscape making mostly comedies, documentaries or musical dramas. These were not masterpieces but prepared the ground for the cinematic breakthroughs of the 1960s, a period that is arguably the New Wave of Armenian Cinema during a decade that was fruitful for the country’s overall cultural life. Mostly connected to the death of Stalin and subsequently eased censorship, previously banned topics, such as the Genocide, started to be actively discussed and presented in various art forms. 

Nahapet

Hello, It’s Me (1965) by Frunze Dovlatyan officially launched the New Wave. The first Armenian feature to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, Hello, It’s Me explored fast technological developments and post-war trauma that force an individual to reassess their lives. With both Russian and Armenian actors in the cast, the film masterfully played with languages, indicating the social and linguistic differences influencing everyday life within Soviet Armenia and the Soviet Union. Henrik Malyan, another beloved director, also started his filmmaking career in the 1960s and made some of the most important Armenian classic films in the following years (Triangle, 1967; We and Our Mountains, 1970). Malyan’s Nahapet (Life Triumphs, 1977) had its premiere in the Certain Regard section of Cannes and told the story of a man who lost his home and family during the Genocide in 1915 and is trying to start his life anew in an Eastern (Soviet) Armenian village. 

Lyudmila Sahakyants’s The Congregation of Mice

While there were other successful male directors (Yuri Yerznkyan, Armen Manaryan, Grigor Melik-Avagyan, Laert Vagharshyan), the Armenian film industry was not the most favorable place for female artists. The patriarchal mood of ArmenFilm was much looser in the Department of Animation. Inhabited by free-spirited rock music fans, it had a creative and empowering environment for female directors. The department was led by Rob Sahakyants, whose rebellious films reshaped the history of Armenian animation history and brought him fame not only inside the Soviet Union but also in the West. Female animators of the department— Gayane Martirosyan, Lyudmila Sahakyants, Elvira Avagyan, Narara Muradyan—were also widely known and beloved within Soviet Armenia, creating unique, sometimes dark worlds of animation inspired by the folk and lyric literature of Armenia. Almost forgotten, their animations were recently restored and a special program of the films will be playing at the Film Restored-The Film Heritage Festival in Berlin, Germany at the end of this month.

During the period leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union and after the establishment of the Republic of Armenia in 1992, the general themes and style of Armenian cinema drastically metamorphosed. Dark and pessimistic, infused with eroticism, violence and anger, these films were inspired by the European classics of Antonioni and Bergman, following highly politicized and lonely urban characters stuck in never-ending depression. Suren Babayan, Dmitri Kesayants, Don Askarian and Vigen Chaldranyan were the new names of cinema, with their films were travelling to international festivals in Rotterdam, Trieste and Berlin. Displacement, migration and identity crisis were the central theme for the cinema of Harutyun Khachatryan, whose Kond (1987), The Wind of Emptiness (1989) and Documentarist (2003) were shown and awarded in Karlovy Vary, Visions du Reél and  Cairo IFF, among others. 

The catastrophic economic situation that followed the first war in Nagorno-Karabagh (1991-1992)—collapse of infrastructures, blockage, hunger, cold winters without electricity—made many directors quit their filmmaking careers and look for jobs to survive. The film industry almost stopped functioning for several years. The revival started to take place in 2000s, but a corrupted funding system brought only frustration and amateur films. 

The establishment of the Golden Apricot International Film Festival in 2004 played a crucial role in the development of the Armenian film industry. Through its 20 years of existence, the festival became the only alternative source for distribution introducing Armenian audience to independent cinema. Various workshops, trainings and the co-production market within the festival have brought up a generation of aspiring filmmakers and opened a path for alternative film funding opportunities. The Velvet Revolution of 2018 became another turning point for the film industry development. Shushanik Mirzakhanyan, the newly-appointed head of the National Cinema Center of Armenia, NCCA (the successor of ArmenFilm and main film funding body of Armenia) and her team considerably improved the transparency and funding regulations of the organization, thus providing many young filmmakers with a chance to make films. As a result, more Armenian films are produced and presented at the international film festivals: Cannes (Should the Wind Drop, Nora Martirosyan, 2020), Busan (Chnchik, Aram Shahbazyan, 2020), DOK Leipzig (Village of Woman, Tamara Stepanyan, 2019 and Nothing to Be Afraid Of, Silva Khnkanosyan, 2019), Visions du Reél (5 Dreams and a Horse, Vahagn Khachatryan, Aren Malakyan, 2022), Annecy (Aurora’s Sunrise, Inna Sahakyan, 2022). Besides auteur cinema, NCCA also finances entertaining films that get wider distribution in the country.

Currently, Armenia has a small but relatively stable rate of film production with around 15 films a year. Mostly funded by NCCA, many of these films are co-produced with Europe. The number of female directors has considerably increased in the recent years, bringing more female stories to the screen, thus making it one of the current topics of Armenian cinema. Other prevailing themes of the contemporary cinema are the wars in Nagorno- Karabagh and the Velvet Revolution.

The industry still has many problems to solve but hopefully, the first hundred years of the experience will make the second hundred easier to pass.

A cohort of the Critics Academy of the Film at Lincoln Center, Sona Karapoghosyan is an Armenian film critic and curator. Since 2018, she has curated the Regional Competition program of the Golden Apricot International Film Festival focusing on films from Western Asia. A member of The International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI), Karapoghosyan contributes to several local and international publications.

By Tasnim News Agency

By Marina Khubesrian

It’s time to check in with your Armenian friends. Listen to our history of Genocide in 1915 by Turkey and Azerbaijan.

The City of Glendale is considered to be the center of Armenian American life in the US.  It comprises 40 percent or 80,000 of the 200,000 Glendale residents. Most are very distressed by events in the Armenian Highlands.  The indigenous population, known as Artsakh and Nagorno Karabakh, are being forcibly displaced from their ancestral lands of 3000 years.

Read about it in an article published in this very news magazine in 2020 here.

Armenians in the diaspora are descendants of survivors of the Genocide of 1915. They carry the ancestral trauma, still an open wound, because justice has not been served. Turkey has never been held accountable for this crime against humanity. Turkey denies the historical fact that it carried out a planned massacre, forced deportation, and deaths of one and a half million Armenians.  Thousands of other Christian minorities from established societies in Anatolia for millennia also died.

For 107 years, Armenians recognize the anniversary of the genocide. On April 24 in 1915 the Attaturk regime rounded up and executed 500 Armenian civic and cultural leaders. Turkish authorities forced the men into death camps. They drove the elderly, women, and children out of their homes into forced exodus and death marches to concentration camps in the heart of the Syrian desert of Deir ez-Zor.

How is it that these same states continue the genocide of Armenians now in Artsakh? When a genocidal state is not held accountable it will continue this destruction, and history will repeat itself. Today, the Aze regime named a street in the occupied capital of Stepankert after one of the masterminds of the 1915 Genocide. He was convicted of war crimes by the International Criminal Court yet is celebrated as a hero by Turkish states. Today, the Aze regime is rounding up diplomats, security, and civic leaders of Artsakh and charging them with false crimes.

On September 27, 2020, Armenians woke up to the horrible news that Azerbaijan’s ruling regime unleashed an all-out military assault on the Republic of Artsakh and its civilian population. This war lasted 44 days and took the lives of 4000 defenders of the Republic, mostly young men ages 18-22. Thousands fled their homes and villages at the border areas. Many returned after a ceasefire agreement that promised their security with the presence of Russian peacekeepers. The ceasefire held, with frequent violations by Aze, until September 19, 2023 when Aze forces unleashed attacks on the villages and the capital city of Stepanakert. A 10 month siege and blockade followed that slowly starved the Artsakh population.

In December of 2022, the Aze petro-dictator, Ilham Aliye, erected a blockade of the only road connecting Artsakh to Armenia via a land bridge called the Lachin Corridor. This blockade lasted 10 months. It resulted in food scarcity, hunger, malnutrition, and near starvation of over 100,000 ethnic Armenians of Artsakh of whom 30,000 are children. The blockade resulted in shortages of medicine and basic goods. Even worse, Aze President Aliyev cut off electricity and gas supply forcing the population to endure freezing cold winter temperatures. The Russian peacekeepers did nothing to open the blockaded road.

As the population faced imminent starvation, the international community did little other than “strong condemnation” of Aliyev. They did not impose sanctions, essentially giving Aliyev a green light to starve the population of Artsakh, and force them into subjugation to Azeri rule.

Aliyev and his family have ruled Azerbaijan in a dynastic fashion for 30 years. The core of his policy is to indoctrinate the population, starting in kindergarten, to hate and dehumanize Armenians, called Armenophobia. His military command commits war crimes, atrocities, and acts of terror including executions and beheadings of captured POWs and civilians. Videos of these acts of terror, vandalizing Armenian homes that his forces have captured, are circulated on social media to induce terror on the Armenians of Artsakh and Armenia. Aliyev has a documented history of ordering the destruction of centuries old Armenian churches, monasteries, and cemeteries in lands he has invaded. It is his attempt to rewrite history that denies the Armenian existence for millennia on these lands. This is what awaits the fate of the hundreds of ancient monuments scattered in Artsakh unless they are protected by UNESCO.

The Armenians of Artsakh were on the verge of starvation. Increasing condemnation of Aliyev and focused diplomacy did not result in lifting the blockade. The International Court of Justice ruled that the blockade, starvation, and intimidation are illegal. The Court warned Aliyev that his actions are considered genocide since starvation leads to death.

Aliyev, strongly backed and encouraged by Turkey’s President Erdogan, ignored the order to end the blockade. Instead he amassed his vast petro-dollar funded military machinery along the entire border with Artsakh. He conducted a massive military strike including raids, expulsions of Armenians from their homes and villages, and bomb strikes on population centers and the capitol Stepanakert. The attacks were more horrific than during the war in 2020, forcing many to flee for their lives with just the clothes on their backs and very few belongings. Atrocities were committed against civilians including children. The Russian peacekeepers did nothing to deter the attacks, but had orders to evacuate those who had no means of escape. Thus began the exodus of ethnic Armenians from their ancestral home of 3000 years. When the Aze military arrived in Stepanakert, no one felt safe after the bombardment and blockade. The democratically elected government was forced to surrender, to order a decree to disband the democratically elected government, and submit to Aze rule. Aliyev said that he would guarantee the security of Armenians if they chose to stay and become Azeri citizens and “reintegrate” into Azerbeijan, which has never had rule over Artsakh.

Over the next 5 days was the full ethnic cleansing, a legal genocide of the ethnic Armenian population of Artsakh. Over 100,000 people took to the road that now was unblocked for their exodus to the Armenian city of Goris. The Armenian government received the refugees, provided food and humanitarian aid, and began the process of providing short and long term shelter and assistance. The heroic people of Artsakh held out as long as possible hoping for peace, but were forced to exit the hellscape created by the regimes in Aze and Turkey.

The journey of 1-2 hours through the mountain roads to Armenia took 2-3 days. People packed into vehicles with few belongings, rushed to get out, endured hunger, thirst, rain, and cold in open bed trucks, tractors, and whatever transport they could find. The Armenian government sent buses to evacuate those stranded in Stepanakert. They were terrified, hungry, and cold for 5 days. The reports, images of the exodus, are harrowing. The anguish on the faces of the people is hauntingly palpable. They were forced to leave everything behind; 30,000 childhoods were stolen. Many elderly did not survive the extreme duress and suffering of forced exodus from their homeland.

As descendants of survivors of the Armenian Genocide of 1915, Armenians in the Diaspora are witnessing a repeat of the trauma of violently forced exodus, and reliving the horrors of genocide. It’s impossible to describe the shock, dread, and disbelief that this could happen in 2023.  The world is watching but not heeding the warnings.

The media is finally starting to cover this story. They ignored the gravity until it led to the disastrous result of ethnic cleansing. A step in the right direction happened on October 5, 2023: the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling for the European Union to impose sanctions on Azerbaijan in connection with its actions against Nagorno Karabakh (Artsakh).

All Armenians want is peace to live on their indigenous and ancestral lands as a sovereign democracy. Aze has now amassed troops at the border of Armenia and threatened invasion of Southern Armenia if they are not given control over Armenian lands to turn into a trade corridor. I hope that what Aliyev did is taken seriously by the international community of states. I hope that effective deterrents are put in place, including military aid to Armenia, which Aliyev has started calling “Western Azerbaijan.” He continues to appropriate what Armenians have built and nurtured.

Efforts are underway to address the discrimination of Armenians and Armenophobia in Aze. I hope that these efforts succeed for the sake of the Aze children being indoctrinated in hate and falsehoods.

I hope the world realizes the threat Aze and Turkey pose to peace, ethnic minorities, and smaller neighboring countries being destabilized and invaded. All this is for the dream of Pan-Turkism and Turkish hegemony.

I am grateful for the Armenian nation in the homeland and the Diaspora that keeps on fighting for justice. I am grateful for our allies in peace, justice, and humanity. There are opportunities to support and donate to organizations that are active in political advocacy (ANCA.org), in preparing the legal case of war crimes by Aze officials by documenting evidence (CFTjustice.org), and in providing material aid to the forcibly displaced and traumatized heroic Indigenous people of Artsakh. Locals can also bring donations of clothing to the Artsakh Farmers Market in Glendale every Sunday in October.

Marina Khubesrian, M.D., South Pasadena Mayor (ret.), Family Physician, and Enviro-Health Policy Advisor

https://www.coloradoboulevard.net/time-to-check-on-your-armenian-neighbor/