{"id":1453,"date":"2015-04-27T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-04-27T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arvestagir.am\/yerb-haykinon-baxti-khmahatchuykhin-matnvec\/"},"modified":"2026-10-21T11:22:28","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T07:22:28","slug":"yerb-haykinon-baxti-khmahatchuykhin-matnvec","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arvestagir.am\/en\/yerb-haykinon-baxti-khmahatchuykhin-matnvec\/","title":{"rendered":"The painful fate of the Armenian cinema"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oh, God forbid, I don\u2019t claim to the honor of the \u201cgreat discoverer of America\u201d in my modestly essay, which is devoted to one of the most unprecedented discoveries of humanity \u2013 the cinema. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Vice versa, I just want to establish the fact that in it rather advanced age, our native, Armenian cinema had a long, dusty and even tragic path to universal love and glory. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

And here it (editorial: of course, cinema), in a certain period of its existence, however, as the world cinema, faced with rhetorical dilemma: \u201cTo be or not to be?\u201d\"Haykino-Haspush\"<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But before to touch the subject of our discussion let me draw an \u201cencyclopedic tour\u201d around the phenomenon which is called \u201cCinema\u201d.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

And in conclusion, what is the cinema? The visual novel that you can see, feel and live with the characters, try to understand their daily and emotional experiences, their ups and downs, to share sadness, joy?!..<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Maybe, I\u2019m not going to argue with you. However, in my humble opinion, there is no unambiguous and clear answer on aforementioned question, \u2013 it is individual, I think.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Judge for you, every person on this planet has his own understanding about that wonderful, sometimes contradictory, generating ambivalent emotion of the phenomenon by the name of the movie. So, it is actually.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But, in particular, the roots of the word \u201ccinema\u201d (<\/em><\/strong>Greek: <\/em><\/strong>\u03c3\u03b9\u03bd\u03b5\u03bc\u03ac<\/em><\/strong>) gone far away to elder Greek language, literally means \u201cto move\u201d. It is a creative interweaving of all fields of art \u2013 literature, music, painting, theatre, and etc.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh, it seems to me that we\u2019ve digressed from the topic. Just it\u2019s <\/em><\/strong>not a text record of the master class on the history of cinema studies\u2026<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Armcinema: childhood and adolescence <\/strong><\/p>\n

There are lots of controversial facts and historical references about the origin of the Armenian cinema school.<\/p>\n

As the date of birth of Armenian cinema, film critics\u2019 stresses year of 1926, when the legendary Soviet-Armenian filmmaker Hamo Beknazaryan presented to the audience his touchingly film \u201cHonor\u201d (Namus).<\/p>\n

At its time, the film based on the immortal novel of Alexander Shirvanzade had a real shock effect on the na\u00efve viewer of a small country.<\/p>\n

\"Haykino-Pepo-01\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Haykino-Pepo-02\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Haykino-Gikor\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So, the era of silent movies begins in Armenia with the most influential films after \u201cNamus\u201d, such as ethnic \u201cZareh\u201d, \u201cHaspush\u201d, ironical \u201cShor ev Shoror\u201d, \u201cKikos\u201d, the national fairytale, thrilling \u201cGikor\u201d.<\/p>\n

Continuing this brief excursus on \u201cchildhood\u201d times of Armenian cinema should important to note the year of 1935, when Sundukyan\u2019s \u201cPepo\u201d came out on Soviet cinema screens. This social drama marks the beginning of \u201csound cinema\u201d era.<\/p>\n

A lot of famous Armenian artists gave all the tension and emotion of the action drama in their delightful play. That for a short time \u201cPepo\u201d has gained international recognition and has found its rightful place among the masterpieces of world cinema.<\/p>\n

Now, referring to the \u201cadolescence\u201d of our Armenian cinema, we are getting closer in fact to the subject of our discussion; a crisis\u2026<\/p>\n

\"Haykino-Shor-ev-Shoror\"<\/a> \"Haykino-Zare\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Haykino-Namus\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Thus, the first time Armenian cinema come face to face severe crisis in 30-40 years, when the omnipresent censorship of hierarchical Soviet authorities made absurd thematic restrictions for filmmakers.<\/em><\/p>\n

In particular, we\u2019re talking about national historical-revolutionary them which were contrary to Soviet ideology. However, due to Armenian cinema brave luminaries of that period, they\u2019ve released a number of masterpieces such as \u201cZangezur\u201d and \u201cDavid Bek\u201d, but the crisis is not over yet. <\/em><\/p>\n

The Armenian cinema has managed to overcome this problem only after 10 years, in the fifties, when young, bold and talented filmmakers who created truly masterpieces of short film let know about themselves. <\/em><\/p>\n

The damned ones: the painful fate of the Armenian cinema<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

After the collapse of USSR Armenia had faced out with heavy and dark 90\u2019s that was accompanied by socio-political, economic and ideological crisis in society.\u00a0 That\u2019s actually we approached the subject of our discussion; a new painful page in history of our nation through the cloudy 90\u2019s Armenian cinema. \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Haykino-Anitsvatsner\"<\/a>And in this context I should not the titles of movies of those years which accurately describes the bitter period of formation of our Republic; \u201cThe Damned ones\u201d, \u201cThe wind of Oblivion\u201d, \u201cHostage\u201d, \u201cBlood\u201d, \u201cThe last stop\u201d, \u201cLabyrinth\u201d, \u201cBlack and white\u201d, \u201cDer Voghormea\u201d. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

About that so-called \u201cboardwalk empire\u201d (gang world), which was concealed from the eyes and ears of the Soviet society tells brilliant Armenian film director Demetrius Kesayants (1931-2001) in his crime thriller, called \u201cThe Damned Ones\u201d .<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Damned Ones\u201d is an emotional \u201cchamber\u201d thriller reflected the brutality of the post-Soviet period, where the main action takes place in the dangerous correctional colony and revolves around the cruel fate of wrongly jailed young man Tigran.<\/p>\n

Kesayants comprehensively explores the transformation of a human into a cold-blooded monster. And anyway he asked, is it possible to stay human in the prison?<\/p>\n

It turns out that this is possible; but the strong desire for freedom leads the film\u2019s hero to a tragic end. By the way, the story takes place between two historical events; the collapse of Soviet Union and the rising of Artsakh movement.<\/p>\n

Having watched this film for several times, I came to the conclusion that the director were actually considered the prison hierarchy as the synonym of the Soviet Empire, while Karabakh freedom-fighters movement as a manifestation of willpower.<\/p>\n

I think he coped with this task\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oh, God forbid, I don\u2019t claim to the honor of the \u201cgreat discoverer of America\u201d in my modestly essay, which is devoted to one of the most unprecedented discoveries of humanity \u2013 the cinema. Vice versa, I just want to establish the fact that in it rather advanced age, our native, Armenian cinema had a \u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":304,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[185,191,281],"class_list":["post-1453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie_and_theatre","tag-feature-film","tag-film","tag-movie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arvestagir.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arvestagir.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arvestagir.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arvestagir.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arvestagir.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1453"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/arvestagir.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2054,"href":"https:\/\/arvestagir.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453\/revisions\/2054"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arvestagir.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arvestagir.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arvestagir.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arvestagir.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}