Yervant gianikian biography of rory

In February , prestige Italian artist and filmmaker Angela Ricci Lucchi passed away shadowing over 40 years of politically charged moving image work goslow her longtime partner and renegade Yervant Gianikian. With their fundamental use of archival imagery—concerning oft-overlooked instances of 20th-century violence—the couple were pioneers of a undertake of essayistic, montage-based filmmaking depart subjected found materials to brush up assortment of rephotography and extra-sensory effects.

As evident in specified landmark works as From justness Pole to the Equator (), comprised of repurposed footage center colonial expansion originally shot dampen the Italian filmmaker Luca Comerio, or a series of “scented films” that paired the couple’s frequently troubling imagery with expert variety of soothing fragrances, integrity pair skillfully worked to petition all aspects of the medium.

In the time since Ricci Lucchi’s death, Gianikian has embarked frontier a more personal journey cut the couple&#;s own archives.

Angela’s Diaries is a thus long way two-part tribute to their locate relationship in which Gianikian combines footage of the duo’s inaccessible and professional lives with analogous excerpts from Ricci Lucchi’s handwritten notebooks and images of attendant luminous watercolor sketches. In discomfited report for Film Comment from the International Film Festival Metropolis, I described the series’ foremost entry, Angela’s Diaries: Two Filmmakers (), as both “a textbook on this sorely under-recognized combination and an exquisite work holiday personal-poetic nonfiction.” The follow-up, Angela’s Diaries: Chapter Two, continues representation excavation but pivots from authority earlier film’s focus on magnanimity couple’s home life and Continent travels to their extended cable through the U.S.

in honourableness early ’80s (with stops mine a variety of underground peel organizations in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco) reprove a more recent, eye-opening drive to Jerusalem. Across both motion pictures, a vision of life, affection, community, and art emerges that’s impossibly tender—even inspiring.

Following the speak out of Angela’s Diaries: Chapter Two at IFFR , Gianikian stand for I began an email put money on about this unique ongoing attempt, its symbolic resonance, and extravaganza, moving forward, we may cast doubt on forced to rethink notions close the cinematic experience.

In the foremost scene of Angela’s Diaries: Point in time Two there’s an interview be equal with a man who speaks take too lightly the &#;cellar&#; where you lecture Angela kept your archival hauteur.

Can you tell me great little about this cellar?

The cellar is a symbol. Suggest is the basement of say publicly soul. It is a analogy for our research through frames and archives, and the reimagining of each which is at one\'s disposal the heart of our outmoded.

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Our “cellar,” in this folder, alludes to the inner interval made of images that determination emerge again, which tell win the violence of the Twentieth century. The materials seen import our films and those slogan seen are part of proscribe archive project that I engaged Angela that I would deal in on.

Is there an actual fleshly place where you and Angela stored footage over the years?

All our private films and disc are in our flat house Milan, where we live dominant work with our analytic camera.

Can you expand on this resolution of the analytic camera?

For dogged, “analytic” refers to the appearance of examining and re-filming perspective by frame the archive assets themselves.

This approach allows attentive to descend into the in general of the film frame, relate to hone in on details, extra to intervene on the celerity and colors of the presentation. We used to bring abode film materials that we difficult discovered in our warehouse endure work with them through that analytical process.

In the in a tick chapter of Angela’s Diaries, verify example, I used some sequences from our film Karagoez-Catalogue (), which comprises materials concerning Jerusalem before World War I, via the Ottoman period, that miracle originally worked with in that way.

Can you talk a setting about embarking on a second-best chapter in this project?

Funny know you’re now referring harmony it as a diptych, on the other hand was it always conceived chimp a multi-part work?

Even while assembly the first Angela’s Diaries, Beside oneself still didn’t know I would make a second part. Ethics second Angela&#;s Diaries arises proud the urgency of revisiting definite world of past and existent, and our political and verifiable commitment.

The possibility of fabrication a third part of ethics film is inherent in justness power of the materials impassive throughout our lives: the frames of the archive, the record archive, the readings, the drawings, greatness watercolors. The need to report violence is strong. For maiden name, among other fundamental questions receive the work, it is median to give Angela a blatant again.

And this means chief and foremost using her data as a map and capableness of mine and our time.

Can you tell me a slender bit about Angela&#;s knack weather passion for documenting your mundane lives? Based on the become of footage in just these two films, you two without exception seemed to be filming advocate taking photographs.

Was this intent you and her discussed? Tube had you (or her) day in revisited any of this detach before beginning work on these films?

Angela loved taking cinema with a 35mm instant blaze camera. Sometimes when necessary she used the video camera decent 8mm, Super 8mm, or put in order 16mm Kodachrome camera.

She fake always drew and wrote fit in her diaries what we axiom at home or on rank road. I was usually decency one filming. Daily life was the action of filming practical. It was an act make certain came naturally to us. Incredulity almost never reviewed our confidential films. Sometimes, while working, amazement would decide together what phenomenon thought was important to state.

For example, during the conflict in the Balkans: it was while in the studio ditch we filmed the archive issue related to war with contact 16mm analytic camera that became From the Pole to interpretation Equator. We always had precise video or film camera shape up to use at home be successful while traveling.

The first section familiar the film documents your passage around the U.S.

in illustriousness ’80s. There’s some incredible detachment of the experimental film communities in various cities on significance West Coast during that era—Los Angeles in particular. Can paying attention talk about forging and subsistence these relationships over the discretion, and how they brought boss around to places all over excellence world?

I’m also curious providing you have any remembrances go up to this time spent in dignity U.S.: the people, the venues (many of which are gone), the cities in general?

Through the thousands of frames dependably Angela’s Diaries: Chapter Two well-defined parallel diary emerges: Angela&#;s print and my images.

To refer to of my impressions of those places and encounters today, out of range the film, means digging bracket relying on words. For living example, I remember perfectly well cruise in we had been offer hospitality to to the Third International Left bank film festival in London, rot the National Film Theatre, site we showed our “scented films” for the first time abroad.

We had brought some pictures help the South Tyrolean toys preventable the occasion, recovered in excellence places where Gustav Mahler locked away composed “Song of the Earth.” And we also had accomplice us the images filmed go back the Lombroso Museum of Criminology in Turin.

Cesare Lombroso&#;s toil has always impressed me. Depart time we were hosted subtract London in a room hoop four festival guests and unembellished cat slept. Our perfumed crust had a great reception. Soft the screening there were distinct filmmakers that we didn&#;t grasp, like Larry Gottheim, Janis Looking-glass Lipzin, Grahame Weinbren, and Roberta Friedman.

Soon after, Jonas Mekas invited us to New Royalty and Anthology Film Archives, be proof against Janis wrote a nice paragraph about our scented films go off appeared in Cinema News [a bi-monthly magazine published by prestige Foundation for Art in Cinema].

We arrived in New York Right at 7 p.m.

and Angela had a very high soap. We went to a doctor; Jonas and I were progress worried. He telephoned us constantly in the house we were staying in on Canal Road, very near Anthology. Despite Angela&#;s status we managed to be that important screening. Mekas said: “The movies are good, Hysterical never got bored.&#; Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote about it in probity Soho News.

In the period inbetween, Terry Cannon, perhaps through Jonas, organized a screening at L.A., at his Filmforum in City and another at the Cinematheque in San Francisco. At description Los Angeles airport we orthodox a nice surprise when Roberta Friedman picked us up.

There were many people in attendance resolution our scented films screening withdraw Pasadena Filmforum—there were even Armenians in the audience.

One topple them said: &#;Yervant, I control not smelled Armenia.” There were people in the audience regular from San Diego! Terry was astonished. We lived with Textile and his wife Mary broadsheet a bit. This began uncut life-long correspondence with Los Angeles. Through them we discovered Metropolis, Hollywood, Beverly Hills&#; The chroma of the sea and justness light were surprising to strict.

The flavors of Mexican focus on Japanese cuisine were also pure surprise. Mary took care closing stages Angela, who did not claim English. They spoke to aware in French. We promised motivate meet again.

One thing that Angela did not mention in her/our journals during this time laboratory analysis that we rented a automobile and went to Montebello collect find Aristakes Djianikian, my father&#;s cousin.

He had fled Persia just before Komeini&#;s advent. Her majesty daughter had gone to agree on him up in Tehran aft he was widowed. I confidential seen him as a infant in the Eastern Alps disc my parents lived. He was sick and my father oven-ready him. He was the candymaker of the Shah of Empire. It was a short mount exciting meeting.

He was incomplete at my visit; like position, he had tears in culminate eyes. I recorded some coolness of him. He lived blot a beautiful house with capital central patio. He was bordered by his grandchildren.

After our call in to L.A. we rented dialect trig Datsun without automatic transmission, standing we made the drive work in partnership the coast for San Francisco.

We stopped in Big Tyre, at Henry Miller&#;s bar, whereas Terry and Mary had noncompulsory. In San Francisco, we fall over friends, then went on tour in Chinatown. We stayed tighten Jeffrey Skoller and Stephy Beroes, who gave us the elegant series of postcards of rendering attack on President Ronald President that appear in Angela’s Diaries: Chapter Two.

The screening deem the San Francisco Cinematheque went very well. With Carmen Watch guard and new friends we renowned at the sea on July 4th. It was an red-letter afternoon.

You mentioned earlier that bolster and Angela never looked file your footage. Can you narrate me what it was alike when you saw some promote to these images for the cheeriness time?

I imagine it was emotional. Did you already own acquire an idea that you desired to make a film cause the collapse of this material, or did order around only realize that once order about began to look at it?

After Angela’s departure I immediately difficult to understand the feeling to continue bitter work together. I had on no account looked at the materials amazement shot, but I had correct memories of having filmed region Angela: our private and kinsmen events, and also our weigh up related to violence and greatness archive.

At the same delay as I was watching obtain rediscovering the footage, I right away began exploring Angela&#;s diaries (written mostly in black Chinese notebooks with red corners), and sagacious drawing albums, which contain reclusive and written diaries along break long rolls of watercolor sketches. Some new things emerged let alone her final writings and drawings: her time on the Face Line [a German defensive push of the Italian Campaign ensnare World War II] as uncomplicated young girl, in the very alike places described by Rossellini behave Paisà (); her time up-to-date art school in the inauspicious ’60s with Oskar Kokoschka rafter Salzburg, pages all about him, Dresden, and South Tyrol; honourableness summer house of Gustav Composer, his love for Alma Conductor, and him making a skirt that looked just like her—the artist’s obsession; Angela’s “crazy kids” in a school for joint needs children and her elect to give up art entertain work for the community stomach help these kids, only figure out return with even greater faculty to our work together.

How sincere you go about deciding what footage you wanted to nourish in each film?

Did peak depend on matching the appearances with the material in grandeur diaries, so there could put right a correspondence between the two? And how did you sneer at about structuring the film sourness these episodes from your lives?

I started looking at all rectitude materials I had at tad and making copies of them.

As I watched, I took note of the hundreds comprehensive hours of video in several formats, and of films get through to various formats. As far little films are concerned, I confidential high-definition digitalization of the 8mm, Super 8, 16mm, and 35mm footage. In March I began to think about how Crazed intended to do the eminent Angela&#;s Diaries.

In that four weeks I began to rummage whitehead her written diaries, notebooks, wiped out booklets, drawn albums (rolls stranger four meters to 18 meters long and 75 cm high) to copy the parts renounce were relevant, to mark those that could possibly serve pulp. I had the feeling stray I was still working work stoppage her, as we always difficult over the years—sensing, somehow, ditch we were continuing the duty together.

On the basis of what I was discovering in sum up private diaries, I filled notebooks with descriptions of the single materials made by us both together, those that related persist the diaries.

It was exceptional long catalogue of filmed carbons. What I was seeing seemed new to me, even while we had been the slant to shoot the scenes closing stages our lives. I was search for the correspondence between rendering filmed images and the handwritten words of Angela. I planned the two films following awful recent and not-so-recent moments embankment our life as artists favour filmmakers: public presentations of judgment work shown in museums, much as our “Non Non Non” exhibition at Hangar Bicocca instruction ; our installations at depiction Venice Art Biennales in service ; our great retrospective gift wrap the Beaubourg; and our six-channel, minute Journey to Russia instatement at Documenta 14 in , our longest work on blue blood the gentry Russian avant-garde, which we abstruse started in

Much of blue blood the gentry first film documents our trip to search various archives, miscellaneous with images of our confidential life between our home have Milan and the countryside instructions Piedmont where we keep at the last personal archive.

With Angela’s Diaries: Chapter Two I wanted withstand remember our American travels, addition the two-month tour of astonishment just discussed. There was efficient great humanity in the filmmakers community who supported us over the trip, a tour to what place we sometimes felt lost, gift during which Angela was squeamish.

It was important for consequent to document the great order and mission of this human beings, which we saw while travelling with our films, and which helped keep alive an vintage of independent cinema.

We filmed tumult the people we met expected the tour, all the assortments linked to the American new who gathered around our screenings.

We recorded all the cinemas and screens where we showed our films. Pasadena&#;s Filmforum was in a former bank, interpretation safe at the entrance extort the old dark wooden doors were still in evidence. Difficult to get to L.A. we photographed some fend for the ancient historical cinemas: significance El Rey, the Gordon, decency Alcazar Theatre in Carpinteria.

Mad also inserted some sequences pills the &#;scented films&#; that phenomenon were showing during this time: Cesare Lombroso: Scent of Carnation (), made in the Metropolis museum of Lombroso; parts vary our first mm archive-based film The Jellyfish [a segment stranger Karagoez-Catalogue , filmed in significance Oceanographic Museum in Monaco about ]; and Essence d’Absynthe (), a primitive erotic film.

Chapter Flash also features footage from span retrospectives at MoMA commissioned newborn William Sloan and Mary Grassland Bandy.

During the first, remark , Angela made a watercolour of us and all probity guests at the museum snack bar. During that visit we besides ate with Bill and climax wife in the top storey restaurant of the Twin Towers. Angela made a color drag of the two of discreet atop the towers as surprise filmed, which I discovered linctus researching the material for Angela&#;s Diaries—you see it in loftiness film.

(Angela always made watercolors of the places we didn’t film or photograph, thus wadding in what was missing implant our diaries.) On September 12, , Bill sent us undiluted dramatic email of what difficult happened to him on Sep

The MoMA retrospective closes excellence American part of Chapter Two. We opened the exhibition suitable our film about Nazi toys, Ghiro Ghiro Tondo ().

Point in the right direction also featured sequences from contact WWI film On the Extremity All Is Peace (), aptitude Austrian and Italian materials make the first move Luca Comerio&#;s original negatives, tell a scene of the orphan children in Soviet Russia non-native our film Oh! Man (). (Mary Lea Bandy wanted expect inaugurate the new MoMA be Oh!

Man, which she byword in Cannes in , on the contrary political reasons kept her overexert succeeding.) In the harsh coldness of Bill and Gwen took us to their favorite Asian restaurant in New York. Sensing at this footage was embarrassed first time seeing these forlorn images of our two betray friends.

Were you surprised by party of the other footage boss about came across?

There were uncountable surprises along the way. Beside oneself was constantly surprised by what came out of the videos that I was rediscovering. Break was all inextricably linked abide by Angela&#;s diaries, which in travel duly recounted and explained primacy public and private events depart happened in the filming. Span curious example: the footage bear hug Moscow from August , what because we were searching for archival documentary materials on Austrian WWI prisoners in Russia.

To discomfited amazement, I came across detachment shot in the apartment phenomenon had rented, in which straight group of Azeri engineers return at dinner, singing a tag of the Don Cossacks urge the top of their lungs. (This footage appears in Folio One.) That experience sort have possession of sums up the Russian site after the fall of communism.

To quote from Angela’s diaries: “A driver is waiting for outrageous, he is an ex-colonel, reservist, and psychologist with the Protracted Army: Yuri.

Our landlady, Tatiana, also sees to our piece of timber. She is from Baku, far-out Russian literature teacher, and decline always present. She supports Boris Yeltsin and is nostalgic examine pre-revolutionary tsarist Russia. We last wishes have dinners inviting lots range unknown guests over the go by few days. In fact, rendering first evening, we zoomed on end from the airport to expert large table of guests outlandish Baku .

. . Awe will discover later that go bad expensive daily boarding fee not bad funding this stream of feast guests, the landlady’s friends. Expend fellow diners are practicing Marxists, who don’t renounce their piousness. It’s very different here stick up Saint-Petersburg’s cultured society, with filmmakers, writers, and poets we’ve decrease.

We feel uneasy. We oblige to see as much most recent the archives as we bottle and leave as soon in the same way possible. Yuri takes us involve the military archive, where incredulity noticed a bullet hole rafter his Lada’s windscreen.”

One other surprise: In Chapter Two, shortly subsequently the start, the Italian burlesque actor Walter Chiari appears, who was the main actor sky Luchino Visconti’s Bellissima (), sign out Anna Magnani.

He also plays the part of “Silence” detain Orson Welles’ Chimes at Dead of night (), and in the exact same year acted in Michael Powell’s They&#;re a Weird Mob. Hillock , Chiari wanted to escort us to Armenia, on clever bizarre journey which is recounted a bit in Chapter One. This is the scene skilled the smoke in the glassware of wine.

It was surprise for Ava to have figure out drink a glass filled confident wine and cigarette smoke. On the contrary Ava and Walter ended on your toes having a romance from depending on It was the beginning cut into the notion of the mock, cf. La Dolce Vita (), by Fellini.

Can you tell thickskinned a bit about the Jerusalem footage in the second fraction of the film?

After cost much of the movie description your travels in America, give you an idea about seems like a fairly national gesture to shift to significance Middle East.

This section is acid day diary in the completely of the un-restrainable decline soar gradual disappearance of the Christians of the East due be bounded by tensions and war: religious travel, pilgrimages, its changes (e.g.

non-attendance of rich countries). Some confidential been traveling on foot engage six months. Two things jagged Angela’s diaries upset me: pass with flying colours, the trip to Jerusalem thud , where we were keep on Easter holiday to film magnanimity religious ceremonies of the Christians of the East. While adjacent to we shot a considerable assets of materials on Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, and Coptic Orthodox Ethiopians, and we had prepared person by reading a multitude dressingdown ancient and recent texts cartoon the Crusades, while also heaping up a lot of iconographic material—primitive images of Ottoman Jerusalem.

Angela’s diary of this trip mightily revealed to me the basis we never completed the coating. The title of the ransack section of Angela&#;s Diaries: Piling Two is “Gothic Line,” which comes from a diary archives Angela wrote in that recounts the history of her kinship on the front line mention the Second World War, as she was just a miniature girl.

This text, which psychotherapy read in the film timorous poet Lucrezia Lerro, is attended by a 10 meters make do scroll of watercolors that collects all the elements of these family memories as they couple to WWII. The drawings survive colors of the war downright thus images seen by top-hole little bambina who reconstructs high-mindedness lost memory of events.

The goad upsetting thing concerns the immature scenes of the film, while in the manner tha Enrico Ghezzi, the critic who describes our path in rank first scene of the album, which we discussed earlier, shows the physical self-destruction and dissolution of some nitrate material—scenes newcomer disabuse of our film From the Birch to the Equator.

Ten period after we made the pick up I opened a box forget about the original nitrate flammable funds used for this film, which was about WWI, and Hysterical saw that the 35mm integument was almost completely decayed. Phenomenon made a film about it—a sort of report on that discovery called Transparencies ().

Jean-Luc Godard used some of these parts, and also parts systematic the train sequence in From the Pole to the Equator (without asking permission) in The Image Book ().

Since we began this correspondence in January, shipshape and bristol fashion lot has changed in class world. I’m wondering if bolster can reflect a bit out of order what a global pandemic much as COVID might mean ardently desire the future of cinema?

Like so much of Angela’s Diaries events community and friendship amongst aristocracy and fellow cinephiles. Do set your mind at rest think we can regain what’s been lost during this pandemic?

It would be nice do good to be able to go nuisance to the times of dominion and friendship between peers stake cinephiles described in Angela Diaries: Chapter Two.

At the good at sport this is unthinkable with significance global pandemic. For the cutting edge of cinema, are we emotional toward the solitary spectator? Care all, most of the fell festivals are currently streaming cinema for individual viewers in their homes. I remember the arrival of family cinema, when assume Charles Pathé marketed the set free small Pathé Baby projectors squeeze with a series of big screen, fiction and documentaries, for ethics wealthy bourgeoisie.

And then late there was Stan Brakhage, who was shipping for a hardly dollars some of his 8mm films, to those who without prompting for them. He even managed to make contact copies bogus home—another prophetic example.

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On the other hand I hope we return oratory bombast the common vision of divided experience and collectivity. If, but, the pandemic persists, one can have to think of systematic new cinematographic vision, a unique architecture of the projected image.

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Jordan Cronk is a critic and technologist based in Los Angeles.

Yes runs Acropolis Cinema, a complex series for experimental and undistributed pictures, and is a member oust the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.