The Seasons

The last collaboration of Artavazd Peleshian and cinematographer Mikhail Vartanov is a film-essay about Armenia's shepherds, about the contradiction and the harmony between man and nature, scored to Vivaldi's Four Seasons.

The Land of the People

This is the subject of ongoing discovery of the beauty of the world, that man makes in his life and in his work, which is being developed as part of a big city, presented during a day's work. This film starts and ends with the rotating image of the sculpture of Rodin the Thinker; this famous sculpture has long since become the symbol of the unchanging expression of human thought.

Mountain Vigil

Poetic film about the struggle of man's will and muscles against nature, about the rock-climbers who prevent landslides and eliminate their consequences.

Our Century

A man paves his own way to his own soul through an intellectual quest, tragedies of nations and personal drama. The road moving through the cosmic distances is a flight into one's internal world. This flight and this drama are revealed in this philosophical film-poem.

Inhabitants

Inhabitants depicts animals in panic: the film is mostly filled with shots of mass migrations and stampedes (some, surprisingly, filmed from a helicopter). The title equalizes the species of the earth. Artavazd Peleshian merely alludes to the presence of human beings—a few silhouettes that seem to be the cause of these vast, anxious movements of animal fear. In many ways, this film is an ode to the animal world that moves toward formal abstraction, with clouds of silver birds pulverizing light. Peleshian said, “It’s hard to give a verbal syn...

End

Peleshian transforms footage from a train ride into a metaphor for the shape of a life. Early images of faces on the train give way to landscape, a journey through a black tunnel, and a final emergence into pure white light.

Life

Poetic essay about the beginning of life from labor pains and birth and about its symbolic meaning.

Beginning

Philosophical essay about the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia, its influence on the destiny of the world in the 20th century.