First, a little information on who is Godfrey Reggio. This renowned director born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana is most known for his ‘Qatsi’ trilogy. The latter spent 14 years at Roman Catholic pontifical covenant of Christian Brothers, living in the community devoted to prayers, teaching, and learning. Perhaps, in case of living a certain part of your life only in such an environment and/or with Tibet monks, such a spiritual person could be developed with such a cosmologic views and humanistic philosophy. The expression of all of this is his works, the key topics of which are catastrophic collision of civilization and nature, intrusion of techniques to existence of nature and human, disappearance of ancient cultures, generally, the greatness. The first meeting of this director with the ancient Armenian world and its worthy offspring Artavazd Peleshyan was in 2006, again within the frames of “Golden Apricot” FF. Of course, the great American film director was well aware of Peleshyan’s film arts, and considering the latter to somewhere his teacher, also a source of inspiration of his own works, a few years ago called him ‘Leonardo da Vinci of the movie.’ The two directors, that year, were awarded the highest prize of “Golden Apricot”, “Parajanov thaler”, for the achievements in cinematography. Now, seven years later, the giants of cinematography met again during the days of the festival, which was celebrating its ten-year anniversary. The film festival, which lasted a week, which each year is expected by our cine amateurs, people interested in cinematic achievements, a celebration, which offers watching different, non-commercial films, meeting great film directors, possibility of asking questions to their master classes and during the press conferences, ended with singing and dancing, like all the festivals of the world end. Those particularly are irritated by the fact that they “come, eat, drink, and go, why not to be happy …”, I can reply: when attending a film festival, we also are take part in quite lavish refreshments.
It’s another question that “the bread of not every home can be eaten in the same way…” My not little film festival experience impels me to mention that I have seen nowhere that so many well-known directors, members of the jury dance during the party, and the dancing of the hosted people. By the way, the fact that high quality music was voiced during the opening and closing ceremonies of the festival, starting from Aram Khachaturian’s “Carnival” Waltz and a piece from “Spartacus” ballet (the same music of Khachatryan, whose brilliant hymn composed based on melodic canticles was refused by us, because some people felt a “smell of regime” from it, though it is odd that, so far, no big or small French have felt the smell of guillotine from ‘Marseillaise’) up to delightful “Hover” choir and jazz-symphonic orchestra, and other special performances, of course, could hardly become the subject of ‘analysis’ of our media…
But being far from the secular life, locked in its spiritual world, to some extent, Godfrey (and not Godfrid) Reggio suddenly was liberated from such and such chains (like Antonioni’s widow danced an Armenian dance in 2008, putting her wig aside), without thinking too hard as to how it would be perceived by some Armenian journalists, driven by some inner drive, stood up and started to dance … This is the whole story. Of course, none of those present could think that he would ever be the witness of such a thing, not to speak about of personally inviting to dance, moreover, “torture” this venerable guest… Finally, who would imagine in what light that innocent dance posted on the Facebook page will be viewed, becoming a subject of nationwide discussion, putting aside all the significant achievements of this international film festival. Forsooth, as they say, everyone sees from its tower … It would be good if these journalists would have analyzed the films of the festival with the same activeness and insights. I, personally, felt very good when I saw Reggio dancing, and putting my hand on the Bible in, I can repeat that at the end, parallel to shaking the hands, he said,- “Thank you for supporting me”… Now, some words about the same music played during the party. The renowned American film director, along with other honored guests, was listening to the music that usually is not listed in the repertoire of the restaurant with admiration, Edgar Hovhannisyan’s “Erebuni-Yerevan”, Arno Babajanyan’s “My Yerevan”, Sayat-Nova’s “I don’t know your value”, and together with everyone guessed that those great songs should be heard without accompanied with dancing…
As for the “rabis”, which really torments our existence and not “rabiz” (it is worth mentioning that our most caring journalists are not aware of the origin and etymology of this, as well as of many other words), then even the part tuned in the video, which at least was not spiced with Turkish mugam driving certain share of our compatriots into ecstasy and as a minimum is a bit better or at least is not lower in taste as the music, that under the name of “urban folklore”, has been overflowing the Armenian airtime for nearly two decades turning our airtime into a universal “blowout” (maybe I’m confusing the syntaxes, forgive me, it is the word used by our courteous journalists that I would never imagine could appear in handwriting or typing…); moreover, we have reached to a point that every now and then we are glorifying our “rabis kings” on air, but for some unknown reasons this does not appear (or, very rarely, and noiselessly) under the focus of the journalists bearing the same high values.
While a part of our media (thanks God, we have also journalists that have the culture of watching high quality festival film, and giving polite and correct questions to the authors) continues to look for dirt to the wrong address, it should be noted that the guests of the “Golden Apricot”, setting aside the entire seriousness of their activity and posture, were “torturously” dancing qochari and ver-veri during the sinister closing banquet of the festival. In fact, some of them, with their translators, during everyday communications, independently of each other have said the same thing that “Golden Apricot” is very different from other festivals, unique warm atmosphere reigns here, you seem to be one big family.” How can poor foreigners, tortured with our dances, know what is going on inside of that big family, what poisonous enemies the family have, the film festival that according to the jury member of this year’s “Golden Apricot” Rada Šešić (head of the documentary film competition at Sarajevo FF and has acted as a programmer and a program advisor to the selection committee of Rotterdam and Amsterdam IFF) is very important not only for the region but also throughout the whole cinematography. As my late grandmother would say, ‘Ah, that’s why our one does not become two….”
Siranuish GALSTYAN
“Aravot” daily
