It’s about what I’m striving for, what we’re all striving for — every person, humanity… the wishes and desires of the people to ascend, to transcend. Peleshian

Eastern European arts in the Twentieth Century has had to face both death and the absurd on a scale rare to most regions. While Africa and the Middle East have more than had their share of sweeping up the bodies of generations, it is in Central and Eastern Europe where genocide was born, where the surreal manipulation of reality by totalitarianism was honed and perfected. The arts reflected this, taking such modern and post-modern schools as Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism and forging them into weapons against regimes who literally re-wrote and airbrushed history on a daily basis. No one suffered more under both Communism and Fascism, and no region met those horrors with more humor, defiance and hope.

The short, impressionistic films of Armenian Artavazd Peleshian hauntingly reflect that hope, that humor, in the midst of suffering. That his ethnic family was the first to experience genocide is telling; while impressionistic, his films are grounded in the real, in the struggle to survive and go on, despite loss and confusion and terror. Three of his films, two lasting ten minutes, one thirty minutes, provide a framework for discussing his work, his themes, and the effect of his personal history on his vision.

(In my films) there is no actor, and they do not represent individual destinies. The films rest on a precise principle, on the audio-visual assembly without any verbal comment. ^[1]

Born in Leninakan, Armenia in 1938, and raised on both tales of the Armenian genocide at the hands of Turkey as well as on the theories of Soviet film — he studied in Moscow at the Cinematic Insititute of Moscow in the sixties, and today lives in that city — Peleshian has been concerned in his films both with style and substance. Following the example of such Russian masters as Eisenstein and Vertov, his approach has been to use the montage to illustrate mundane isolated moments which, through comparisons to other images or simply through a rare focus on what is normally ignored, become eternal.

His work inspires and challenges the viewer to recognize the holy in the everyday, and to remember our mutual interdependence on each other as well as with nature. All of our fates are entwined; Peleshian invites us to be a spectator to the true beauty of every moment, as he shows us that we are all participants in each other’s lives, and in history. Thus we are guilty of genocide, we are part of the mob, we are part of what keeps the world going, and are vital to its salvation. The beauty of the world is permanent, despite our attempts to sink it in oppression and murder. Three of Peleshians films will serve here as an example of his poignant aesthetic.

For me, distance montage opens up the mysteries of the movement of the universe. I can feel how everything is made and put together; I can sense its rhythmic movement.^[2]

In 1967’s At The Beginning, the soundtrack is chaotic: bells, gunshots, machine guns, martial/spy movie chase piano; this intensifies the visuals, which obsess over crowds, both in motion and dead, mob scenes. Masses of people in cities, towns, the excitements of travel, flight — progress or panic? The montage symbolizes the advance of history, and the fragmentary opportunities to comprehend: assassinations, crowds expecting to be lead, or attempting to take control over their own fate; driven to fleeting violence, or panic at being victimised; the chaos and creation still at work today. Communism, technology; 'the march of history' only creates new ways to running toward or away from, as a mob, chaos. Only atrocity gives pause, or prayer, but the gunshots, the chaos soon returns.

One of the principal difficulties of my work was the assembly of the image and the sound. I endeavored to find an organic balance allowing for a unified expression of form… even the most elementary noises must carry a maximum expression, and to this end it is necessary to transform their register… I make an effort, not to bring them closer, nor to confront them, but rather to create a distance between them. It is this type of assembly which I name 'assembly with counterpoint.' ^[3]

1972’s thirty minute The Seasons is a holy reading of the world; history in eternally resonant moments. A shepherd and sheep hold on to each other as they tumble along a river. This primordial struggle segues into a more bucolic scene of a local village, herding their flocks, using the wool and the meat to keep vital the life of the group. Man and animal battle against the elements, together; reliance and interdependence. Also brotherhood; scenes of flocks of sheep being herded through town to market contrast with more crowds of people, aimless but as one.

1992's End, at eight minutes, films a simple train trip, and makes it a microcosm of history itself. Filmed are quick glances, impressions of strangers differing in age, mood, dress; fatigue; the train entering a tunnel to emerge in a bright, specific landscape. Then we and the passengers are back into the darkness of the tunnel; the only sound as light approaches is the pounding of the wheels on the track. We emerge out of the tunnel into blinding light — a horn blares. A crash? Oblivion?

Extending the montage aesthetics of Eisenstein and Vertov, and expanding on a worldview both universal and specific to the horrors of the regions of his birth and education, Peleshian has created a cinematic achievement unrivaled in its humanity and challenge to the senses. He makes the mundane and hermetic epic, the microcosm of daily experience representative of all sentient life and its interdependence. His work has expanded the definition of beauty, and of what constitutes eternal, temporal life. We can see these films as poems, or koans: an opportunity to pause, be grateful, and ponder with humility our common experience.

NOTES

1. Peleshian, from My Cinema (trans. By Barbar Balmer-Stutz)
2. Peleshian on his film Our Age; quoted in MacDonald, A Critical Cinema
3. from My Cinema.