Using images shot in Russia and Armenia from World War I to the 1930s and retrieved from a Soviet film archive, Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi constructed a meditative film about the status of Armenians as a people without a state. Inspired by the diary of Gianikian’s father, People, Years, Life uses rare footage depicting the region’s major historic events: the end of Tsarist Russia, violence in the Caucasus during World War I, the 1918 Armenian exodus from Azerbaijan. Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi’s treatment of the material manipulates the speed of the images, adds color and music, and magnifies various parts of the image, so that the movement of bodies across the frame begins to carry the weight of exile, mourning, dispossession.
How to Cook Your Life
Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing
The Battle of The Alamo
The Dream of a Horse
Prisoners of War
Lo specchio di Diana
And... We've Got Sabor
Flowers from the Mount of Olives
On the Heights All Is Peace
Images of the Orient - "Vandalic Tourism"
Balkan Inventory
Ghiro ghiro tondo
