Masterclass: Artavazd Peleshyan

synopsis

The films of Armenian director Artavazd Ashoti Peleshyan (1938) straddle the line between fiction, avant-garde, and documentary film. While still studying, he gained attention with The Beginning (1967), in which he uses archival documentary footage to explore the possibilities of film editing as a source of a new illusive movement. These elemental movements symbolize the revolutionary changes in society begun by the October Revolution. He developed Eisenstein and Vertov’s methods into the revolutionary “distance editing” technique, which aims to reveal random forms of movement while at the same time speaking in the language of art, philosophy, and the sciences. Peleshyan turns the viewer into a distance observer who perceives things more in context than individually. Like individual characters, in his films original archival footage blends with newly shot scenes.

biography

The films of Armenian director Artavazd Ashoti Peleshyan (1938) straddle the line between fiction, avant-garde, and documentary film. While still studying, he gained attention with The Beginning (1967), in which he uses archival documentary footage to explore the possibilities of film editing as a source of a new illusive movement. These elemental movements symbolize the revolutionary changes in society begun by the October Revolution. He developed Eisenstein and Vertov’s methods into the revolutionary “distance editing” technique, which aims to reveal random forms of movement while at the same time speaking in the language of art, philosophy, and the sciences. Peleshyan turns the viewer into a distance observer who perceives things more in context than individually. Like individual characters, in his films original archival footage blends with newly shot scenes.

more about film

director:

Artavazd Pelechian