Hamo Bek-Nazaryan

Known as the “father of Armenian film” and one of the pioneers of Caucasian cinema more broadly, Hamo Bek-Nazaryan (also known as Amo Bek-Nazarov) began his career in film as an actor in pre-revolutionary Moscow. After the revolution, he worked as a film administrator in Georgia. In 1924, he returned to his native Yerevan, where he helped to found the national studio Armenkino and later directed the first Armenian feature, Namus, or “Honour”, in 1925. Among his pioneering works were Zare (1927), recognised as the first feature film about the Kurdish people, and Pepo, the first Armenian sound film, with a score by the great Khachaturyan. Bek-Nazaryan brought the avant-garde techniques of Soviet silent cinema into conventional historical and romantic narratives. Following a personal intervention from Stalin to block production of his film The Second Caravan in 1950, Bek-Nazaryan took up in Central Asia. On his death in 1965, the Armenian national studio was renamed in his honour.