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Movie club - 19
Good afternoon, this is Movie Club with David Saralidze and Igor Malikov.
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Today we are going to talk about the films of the well-known director Artur Peleshyan - "The Seasons" and his other pictures.
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The most famous of Peleshyan's films is "The Beginning", that he made while still a student.
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It was a short documentary film. It was a kind of manifesto, a philosophic movie or even a poetical documentary.
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"The Seasons" is also based on these principles. There are no words; everything is based on the image itself.
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This method was invented by Artur Peleshyan.
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So can one say that the poetical documentary as a genre was first used by Peleshyan?
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Well, I'd rather not say so. But he upgraded this genre so that now it's associated with him.
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However Peleshyan is famous not only for this. He did also invent a new method, the method of remote cut and even wrote a book about it.
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That's his own know-how that was then used by many other well-known directors.
But before we start talking about the remote cut, let's say some words about the movie itself.
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There's no off-screen commentary in the film, there's actually no text at all.
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That's right. There's no text in any of Peleshyan's films.
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But that's uncommon in a documentary. The film is in this case based only on scenes and music.
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Yes, absolutely right. Images and music. In this film it's Vivaldi and folk music.
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However I wouldn't say that it's uncommon in the documentary genre.
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The first cinema was silent after all.
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But there are no such films on the Discovery TV channel.
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No, but these films are popular. It's another genre. There are very famous movies, where there is no text at all.
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And still the audience can understand the director's message.
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Peleshyan's documentary is special, his documentary is a kind of a colorful epic based only on the means of cinema, on cuts and the work of a cameramen.
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Godfrey Reggio calls Peleshyan his teacher. He has directed many films.
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Actually only five.
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And three of them were produced in cooperation with Phillip Glass, the famous composer.
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These films were produced with the use of a remote cut method. The idea is as follows.
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We take two frames that are interesting from the emotional point of view and put other frames (no matter how many) between them.
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These other frames are necessary to explain the main two.
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For instance, in Godfrey Reggio's film "Koyaanisqatsi" the rocket is launched at the start of the film and explodes only at the end.
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The frames that go in between help the idea to unfold. In Peleshyan's films there can be several such frames, not only two and not only at the beginning and at the end. It may be seen only in the film "We".
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This principle is used today in trailers. This principle was in fact introduced by Peleshyan - a sound is replaced by an image and an image by a sound.
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So this principle is now widely used in trailers.
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Yes, it is. It has a very strong influence on people.
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Peleshyan himself used it only two times in his film "We". Here we see rocks and then we see the whole history of the Armenian people that managed to build a civilization on these rocks.
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In trailers it's used widely, almost each one is based on this principles, no matter what's the genre of the film.
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I like when in a trailer a whisper is heard in the absolute darkness and then a bright light suddenly appears.
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This method is good, but both Peleshyan and Reggio used it only several times.
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Peleshyan had a very well elaborated theory. It's believed that Tarkovsky was the last theorist of cinema, the last director who was interested in the theory.
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However Peleshyan was the one. He has written an article and then even a book, he is famous abroad, not only in Russia, not only in Armenia.
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Of course, he is a father of the Hollywood trailer. It's natural.
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Not really. There are a lot of borrowed methods, whose inventors are not known.
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Poetical documentary is a genre that hasn't got a certain message; it's a kind of epic, that's not a socially oriented movie, which aim is to call upon the audience to do or just understand something.
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Poetical documentary focus on emotions, on atmosphere.
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And is there some message?
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Yes, it is. This film is about the strength of the human nature. There is the crowd and a man who is opposing this crowd.
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The conflict may be emotional rather than real. Man is a winner. That's what "The Seasons" is about.
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That's the message of the frame in which we see a shepherd falling in the snow with a sheep in his hands. The man is a winner.
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Certainly this film is devoted to Armenians, who managed to survive.
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Peleshyan is in fact an Armenian art director; he is connected with traditions of his country, even though he currently lives in Moscow.
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If Reggio produces films that has a universal appeal, Peleshyan is an Armenian directors, his films are devoted to Armenia, to his country and its people.
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This is not the last time we will talk about Artur Peleshyan.
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He is a remarkable figure in the history of cinema!
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This was David Saralidze and Igor Malikov, Thank you!
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