April 16, 2023 marks the centenary of Armenian film industry, which was established one hundred years ago in the Soviet Republic of Armenia, on the basis of one nationalized movie theatre and a miniscule budget of 60 rubles. Less than two years later, the first Armenian film production, the documentary feature Soviet Armenia was released across the USSR, setting course for one of the most multifaceted and complex cinematic legacies in the Near East.

Though comparably modest in scale, the output of Armenian film industry boasts a number of internationally-recognized works whose impact and importance extends far beyond the confines of Armenian culture. Aside from globally-revered masterpieces by the likes of Sergei Paradjanov and Artavazd Pelechian, Armenian films also served as an important early platform for some of the first realistic, anti-colonial depictions of Middle-Eastern nations.

The narratives and issues touched upon by Armenian filmmakers address key problems that have defined the development of human civilization throughout modernity. The relevance of these perspectives is particularly tangible and fresh today, since they address universal subjects, such as global wars, genocide, colonialism, class oppression, cultural identity, gentrification and women's rights, from a peripheral position where Western and Eastern cultural paradigms meet, clash and often interlope.

Intending to both celebrate and critically re-assess this rich heritage, the National Cinema Centre of Armenia has devised an extensive series of programs and restoration projects that aim to introduce the latter to new audiences internationally and present the trajectory of Armenian cinema in the context of global cinematic developments and achievements.

After establishing his reputation with a series of highly successful historical dramas, Hamo Beknazaryan undertook his first feature on revolutionary subject matter. Shot on location in the oilfields of Baku, The House on a Volcano addressed this city’s vital role in the entrenchment of the Bolshevik movement in Transcaucasia during the 1900s. The film’s narrative revolves around multiple characters who represent the Armenian and Azerbaijani oil-field labourers and their struggles against the tyranny of capitalist magnates.

Buoyed by socialist ideals, the proletariat overcomes inter-ethnic strife to face a common enemy that has put their lives under jeopardy by forcing them into unsafe housing built on gas deposits. Beknazaryan mixed elements of melodrama, thriller and disaster genres to create a gripping picture that delivers its ideological messages through cinematically inventive means. By interweaving the symbolism of expressionist lighting with the kinetic force of the Eisensteinian montage, the director not only consolidated the films byzantine plot into its swift running time, but also managed to crystalize the multiple experimental trajectories of early Soviet cinema into an aesthetically and emotionally rousing spectacle.

THE HOUSE ON A VOLCANO, 1928,

dir. Hamo Beknazaryan, silent, b/w, 61 min.

Production of Armenkino and Azgoskino Studios. New music score by Juliet Merchant, commissioned by Kino Klassika Foundation.

Dedicated to the 10th anniversary of Armenia’s sovietisation, Land of Nairi was Beknazaryan's first feature documentary, which presented a vast historical panorama of Armenia’s transition from a Russian colony to a Soviet Republic. Admitting to total indifference towards the documentary format, Beknazaryan approached his subject like a dramatic tale in which the central character is the country itself, which is rendered through poetic, and, at times, surreal lens. Composed entirely of archival footage and staged scenes, this meta-narrative consists of stereotypically broad motifs often borrowed from the director’s own films.
Evoking Dziga Vertov, this approach resulted in graphically-powerful, poster-like images that form a propagandistic pamphlet about the evils of capitalism and the ‘triumph’ of Stalin’s collectivisation policies. For Beknazaryan, this banal ideological axis is an excuse to twist cinematic rhythm and composition into an entirely modern language of communication that strives towards the visceral power of music. Widely screened in Paris and other diasporan-Armenian communities in the 1930s, Land of Nairi was forgotten soon after. Despite this, Beknazaryan’s use of archival footage and attempts at "visual musicality" in this film were pioneering precedents that reached a triumphant culmination in the work of later Armenian documentary filmmakers such as Artavazd Pelechyan.

LAND OF NAIRI, 1930,

dir. Hamo Beknazaryan, silent, b/w, 56 min.

Production of Armenkino Studio. New musical score by Vahagn Hayrapetyan, commissioned by Armenian Cultural Association of British Columbia.

As a 1941 laureate of the ‘coveted’ Stalin prize, Hamo Beknazaryan was among the handful of Soviet filmmakers allowed to direct films under Stalin’s autocratic control of the Soviet film industry known as a period of “malokartinye” (picture drought). Thus, The Daughter became one of the very few narrative films made in Armenia during the 1940s, most of which directly or implicitly served the anti-fascist campaign, or the consolidation of Stalinist policies. While promulgating the expected wartime rhetoric, Beknazaryan primarily focused on the moving drama of two orphaned Russian children who are adapted by an Armenian railway station master and his wife.

The archetypal subject provided the director an occasion to explore one of his favoured themes – the entanglement between people of different ethno-cultural backgrounds and their capacity to build connections based on universal values. This deeply humanist perspective is underscored by the film’s metaphorical use of landscape and 'pictorial' compositions, beautifully lensed by Beknazaryan’s frequent collaborator, cinematographer Dmitri Feldman. The distilled visual lyricism of this picture would help to define not only the ‘classicist’ aesthetic of Beknazaryan’s later films, but also of much of Armenian cinema until the mid-1950s.

THE DAUGHTER, 1942,

dir. Hamo Beknazaryan, b/w, 24 min.

Production of Yerevan film studio.

2023 marks the 85th anniversary of Armenian animation, which was founded by one of the mavericks of the medium, Lev Atamanov (Levon Atamanyan, 1905-1981). Widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in world animation, Atamanov began his career in Moscow, creating one of the very first sound animated features, The Tale of the Little White Bull (1933), before moving to Yerevan, Armenia in 1936. Working with minimal resources, the young director established the animation department of the Haykino (Hayfilm) Studio, which produced its first short film, The Dog and the Cat in 1938.

The huge success of this sophomore effort promised a very bright future for animation in the country. But the onset of WWII and the stifling of film production in the USSR by Stalin’s oppressive policies meant that Atamanov was able to complete only two more films in Armenia, before returning to Moscow in 1948. His post-war career at Soyuzmultfilm Studio would be a path laden with groundbreaking masterpieces, such as The Golden Antelope (1954) and The Snow Queen (1957), which brought the Armenian director international fame. Today, Atamanov is considered a figurehead in animation’s history, with major auteurs like Hayao Miyazaki citing him as a crucial influence.

The three films that the director realised in his historical homeland are some of the most precious treasures in the annals of Armenian cinema, which have not yet received the wider, international exposure that they deserve. To enable the rediscovery of these forgotten gems, the National Cinema Centre of Armenia has undertaken a new 4K restoration of The Dog and the Cat from the original camera negative held in the Gosfilmofond film archive in Moscow. The project will be realised by Riga-based Locomotive Studio and be available for screenings in May 2023.