Artavazd Pelechian: poetry at a distance

This week, cinema audiences in London are getting the rare chance to see a selection of films by the great Artavazd Pelechian, as part of the Open City Documentary Festival – always one of the highlights of the year in the capital. Pelechian’s experimental works, which combine archival and original footage assembled via his trademark “distance montage”, cut across documentary, fiction, and essay films. They explore national and natural history, socialist labour, biblical symbolism, and technological progress and catastrophe. Pelechian has been compared to the greats of American avant-garde film, but he also reflects the cinematic traditions of his native Armenia. In the words of the great French critic Serge Daney, Pelechian represents “a missing link in the true history of the cinema.”

The Pelechian programme at Open City has been put together by an old friend of Klassiki: Sona Karapoghosyan, a program curator at Yerevan’s Golden Apricot Film Festival. So this week, host Sam Goff asked Sona to join him in introducing the poetic world of Pelechian’s films.

Interstitial Cinema: the films of Artavazd Pelechian, screens over two consecutive nights this week at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London: Tuesday 14th and Wednesday 15th. Find all the information you need, book tickets, and read an essay by Sona here.

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Intro music by Juliet Merchant.