• 1983: THE MISSING LINK IN THE TRUE HISTORY OF CINEMA

Starting in the 1980s, Pelechian’s cinema, which had up until then mainly been shown in the Soviet Union, began to circulate in Western Europe. An initial foray was made in 1970 when the film We, presented at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen in Germany, received first prize from the jury. But the true turning point came in 1983. The French film critic Serge Daney, former editor in chief of Cahiers du Cinéma, traveled to Yerevan and Moscow to meet the filmmaker. Upon his return to France, he published one of the first profiles of the filmmaker in the Western press, in the newspaper Libération, marking the beginning of Pelechian’s international recognition. The first screening of his films in France was held at the Cinémathèque Française in 1984, as part of an event organized by the Armenian Audiovisual Association.

Serge Daney, “In Search of Arthur Pelechian” in Libération, August 11, 1983.

In 1988, he was invited to present his films at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in the Netherlands, alongside his compatriot, the filmmaker Sergei Parajanov. This occasion marked Pelechian’s first trip outside of the USSR.

In 1989, Jean-Luc Godard discovered Pelechian’s films at the Nyon International Documentary Film Festival in Switzerland, shown as part of a retrospective of Armenian cinema. The Swiss filmmaker subsequently became one of the most avid promoters of Pelechian’s cinema, alongside Serge Daney. In 1989 as well, the journalist Patrick Cazals published the first interview with the filmmaker in a Western journal, in Cahiers du Cinéma. In 1992, Daney published the French version of Pelechian’s theoretical text on his method of distance montage in the second issue of his journal Trafic.

Patrick Cazals, “La Galaxie Pelechian”, in Les Cahiers du Cinéma, 1989.

• 1992: RETROSPECTIVE AT THE JEU DE PAUME AND ENCOUNTER WITH JEAN-LUC GODARD

In 1992, the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris held the first retrospective of Pelechian’s work in the West. The program featured five films: The Beginning, We, The Inhabitants, The Seasons, and Our Century. On this occasion, an exceptional conversation between Pelechian and Godard was published in Le Monde, the fruit of an encounter in Paris organized by the film critic Jean-Michel Frodon. In it, the two filmmakers ask each other questions, in particular on the translations of cinematic terms in each language and the different approaches that these suggest.

On this subject, Pelechian offers using the expression “the measure of the order”, rather than the term “montage,” which he deems unsatisfactory.

This unique conversation was accompanied by a text by Jean-Michel Frodon titled “L’Invention de Pelechian.” [The Invention of Pelechian]

Artavazd Pelechian, “Un langage d’avant Babel,” conversation with Jean-Luc Godard (and english translation), followed by Jean-Michel Frodon's article "L'invention de Pelechian" in Le Monde, 1992.

• 1992-93: THE END AND LIFE AT THE TIME OF THE USSR’S COLLAPSE

In 1992 and 1993, Pelechian made two films, The End and Life, a diptych that was long considered as a masterful culmination of his filmography, until the making of Nature 27 years later. At the time of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Eastern bloc, these two films were taken as an allegory of the upheaval then underway.

1992: The End
Վերջը | Конец

35 mm, black & white, 8 min, Armenia

During a train trip from Moscow to Yerevan, Pelechian filmed passengers, men and women of different ages and origins. This collective journey, steadily unspooling against an uncertain horizon, can be seen as a metaphor for life, a certain notion of destiny.

1993: Life
Կյանք | Жизнь

35 mm, color, 7 min, Armenia / USSR

Life celebrates the moment of birth through images of women in labor and of newborns. A veritable ode to existence, the film references religious iconography to invoke the mystery of childbirth.

• 1990-2019: SCREENINGS AND TRIBUTES AROUND THE WORLD

Starting in the 1990s and over the following decades, Pelechian’s works were shown in various festivals and institutions around the world, and the filmmaker traveled frequently for these events. His films could be seen notably at screenings at the Berlinale (1990), the San Francisco International Film Festival (1991), the MoMA in New York (1999), the Kunsthalle Wien (2004), the Melbourne International Film Festival (2012), L’Étrange Festival in Paris in a selection by filmmaker Godfrey Reggio (2014), BOZAR Brussels (2015), the Toronto International Film Festival (2017), and the Lisbon Cinematheque (2019). His trip to San Francisco in 1991 was an opportunity for him to meet Francis Ford Coppola, whose film The Godfather he admires above all else. On the subject of his favorite films during a master class for students at Yerevan State Institute of Theatre and Film in 2012, Pelechian declared: “I love American, Russian and Chinese cinema. My three favorite films are The Godfather by Francis Ford Coppola, And Quiet Flows the Don by Sergei Gerasimov, and A Chinese Ghost Story by Ching Siu-tung.”

Interview between Artavazd Pelechian and Scott MacDonald, A Critical Cinema 3 – Interview with Independent Filmmakers, 1998. University of California Press.

His cinema became a reference in film school programs. Invited by La Fémis in Paris in 1993, during discussions with students he was asked about his conceptions of cinema and in particular, his method of distance montage.

Conversation between Artavazd Pelechian and students at La Fémis, Paris, 1993.

• 2011: PIETRO MARCELLO, THE SILENCE OF PELECHIAN

In 2011, the Italian filmmaker Pietro Marcello (La Bocca del Lupo, Martin Eden) made the film Il Silenzio di Pelešjan [The Silence of Pelesjan, 52 min]. For this attentive, quiet portrait of the filmmaker, Marcello spent time in Moscow where Pelechian was living at the time. He followed the filmmaker closely with his camera and captured moments from his daily life in his Moscow apartment and as he moved around the city; these sequences are interspersed with excerpts from Pelechian’s films. On the occasion of Pelechian’s exhibition Nature, Marcello produced a new 30-minute version of the film, exclusively presented here.

Pietro Marcello

After studying painting at the Naples Academy of Fine Arts, Pietro Marcello began as an assistant director in 2000. Starting in 2005, he made several documentaries, in particular, La Bocca del lupo in 2009, which received a number of prizes (first prize, Torino Film Festival, David di Donatello for best documentary); and the poetic essay Bella e Perduta in 2015, presented at the Toronto and Locarno festivals. In 2019, he made his first fictional film, Martin Eden. Based on Jack London’s novel, the film was presented at the Venice Film Festival (where main actor Luca Marinelli received the Coppa Volpi), and at the Toronto festival, where it won the Platform Prize.

• 2016: A SYMPHONY OF THE WORLD

In 2016, the collection of texts titled Artavazd Pelechian, Une Symphonie du Monde was published by Éditions Yellow Now, edited by Claire Déniel and Marguerite Vappereau.

The first in-depth exploration published in French on the filmmaker’s career and filmography, the work includes historical texts that accompanied Pelechian’s recognition in France as well as new texts on each of his films.

Interview with Marguerite Vappereau, lecturer and researcher in film studies at Université Bordeaux-Montaigne and editor of the publication Une Symphonie du Monde, 2020.

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