Yervant Gianikian

  • Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi – Dal polo all’ equatore aka From the Pole to the Equator (1987)

    Yervant GianikianAngela Ricci LucchiDocumentaryEthnographic CinemaExperimental
    Dal polo all' equatore (1987)
    Dal polo all’ equatore (1987)

    From the Pole to the Equator (1987)
    By JANET MASLIN
    April 6, 1988
    New York Times

    LEAD: To watch ”From the Pole to the Equator” is to feel that one has seen a ghost – many ghosts, human and animal, from places all over the globe. The spectral quality of this documentary is overwhelming. Two Italian film makers, Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, have drawn upon turn-of-the-century film from regions that were then fabulously exotic – the Arctic, India, Africa and less remote but equally striking settings in the Dolomites and the Caucasus – and assembled it at a sleepwalker’s pace, with changeable color tints and a humming electronic score.Read More »

  • Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi – Inventario balcanico + Nocturne (2000)

    1991-2000Angela Ricci LucchiExperimentalItalyYervant Gianikian

    Quote:
    Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi are filmmakers of the resistance. They don’t want to convince at all costs, but rather aim at inducing a productive sense of dout, leading to a dialectic between present and past, there and elsewhere, truth and lies, ideology and history. Like Godard, the Gianikians have a solid belief in the ontological power of the image, in its radiant permanence. (…) If their films are formally superb, the Gianikians are part of that category of filmmakers of splendor, who use this as a dialectical means, rather than as an aim on itself. It’s also in this regard that they are political filmmakers. Like all great cineastes, the Gianikians learn us to look anew. They are worried poets, who compose their films with scraps from the past to throw a stronger light on the present. (Frédéric Bonnaud) Inventario Balcanico: Images of the Balkans, coming from diverse Yugoslav communities.Read More »

  • Yervant Gianikian – I diari di Angela: Noi due cineasti. Capitolo secondo (2019)

    2011-2020DocumentaryExperimentalItalyYervant Gianikian

    I diari di Angela – Noi due cineasti. Capitolo secondo recounts in the first place our private lives, revealing what we went through while the movies we were making–on the violence of war, on colonialism and fascism—took shape. The film draws on the writings of soldiers, the wounded and prisoners of war. The passages describe some of the battle sites and the boundaries of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and show us the face and the acute gaze of Freya Stark at Asolo, as well as reminding us of the unmistakable voice of Walter Chiari in Soviet Armenia. In those years at the same time as the Trilogia della guerra we were working on a large installation called La marcia dell’uomo. Read More »

  • Yervant Gianikian – I diari di Angela – Noi due cineasti (2018)

    2011-2020DocumentaryExperimentalItalyYervant Gianikian

    Quote:

    Every day of her life, Angela kept a diary, filled with words and drawings, in which she recorded public and private matters, meetings, things she had read, everything. Including the account of two trips to Russia (1989-90). The period of the collapse of the USSR. A diary that she had been keeping in small Chinese notebooks, since before Dal Polo all’Equatore (1986), on our uninterrupted work on the violence of the 20th century. From our tours in the United States with the “scented films” of the late seventies to the Anthology Film Archive of New York and the Berkeley Pacific Film Archive… Now I reread these diaries and see again the film-diary of all those years. I am alone now, after many years of life and artistic work together.Read More »

  • Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi – Su tutte le vette è pace (1998)

    1991-2000Angela Ricci LucchiExperimentalItalyWorld War OneYervant Gianikian

    Quote:
    Their Trilogia della guerra (War Trilogy) consists of Prigionieri della guerra (War prisoners), Su tutte le vette è pace (All’s Quiet on the Mountain Peaks), and Oh! Uomo (Oh! Man). The trilogy explores armed conflict from a variety of perspectives: from the relationship oppressor/oppressed and psychological warfare to the meticulous preparations undertaken by soldiers before battle, the plight of the wounded, and the realities of the battlefield. In their unusual and deeply individual method, Gianikian and Lucchi take old archival footage as the basis for their creations. They then set about reworking and transforming in ways that recontextualize and call our attention to the old film—marked, quite literally, by the passage of time—as a visual, historical document. Their work has been presented in many of the world’s most prestigious international festivals including Cannes, Berlin, Rotterdam, Paris and New York.Read More »

  • Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi – Uomini, anni, vita aka Menschen, Jahre, Leben (1990)

    1981-1990Angela Ricci LucchiDocumentaryExperimentalGermanyYervant Gianikian

    Synopsis:
    Uomini, anni, vita (People, Years, Life) is an allegorical film about the subservience of the people of the Caucasus (both Christian and Muslim alike) in general and Armenians in particular by the Soviet State. Mother Russia even makes on appearance in the beginning of the film in the form of a Saint, with all the Caucasian peoples being made to bow down to her.Read More »

  • Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi – Trasparenze (1998)

    1991-2000Angela Ricci LucchiDocumentaryExperimentalItalyYervant Gianikian

    Quote:
    « Transparences : voir à travers, pouvoir entrevoir le “cinéma” sur pied, ou porté. Œil et main deviennent mouvement, griffes et projection. Sur la décomposition du matériau nitrate, ses transformations (d’un fragment de guerre ayant appartenu à Luca Comerio, tourné par lui en 1916 sur le mont Adamello). Aspect physique en continuelle mutation. Restent les supports déchirés de la pellicule : perforations, collages, fluorescences, couleurs éteintes, jusqu’au total effacement de l’image originale contenue sur le photogramme. Effacement de l’image de la guerre ; parenté entre le nitrate et la poudre à canon. Métamorphoses du cinéma “qui défile” en cinéma de la matière collante, gommeuse, explosive. Dernier état du cinéma : devenir bombe explosive incendiaire de la mémoire. »Read More »

  • Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi – Oh! Uomo (2004)

    2001-2010Angela Ricci LucchiExperimentalItalyWarYervant Gianikian

    Quote:
    Both the Trento History Museum and the Italian History Museum of War of Rovereto came into being immediately after the First World War and have since then combined their exhibition programme with active research into twentieth century history. It is not surprising, then, to find both these museums working together, with the
    support of several local authorities, to produce a documentary.
    The war cycle by Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi finds very vivid echo in the local reality where the Great War still stirs very vibrant memories in the local population and where the physical signs of the conflict are still to be seen in the local territory.Read More »

  • Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi – Karagoez catalogo 9,5 (1981)

    1981-1990Angela Ricci LucchiExperimentalItalyYervant Gianikian

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    Quote:
    This was the first long catalogue Yervant and Angela compiled from an archive found in 1977, composed of films with russian actor legend Ivan Muzzhukin and underwater films from around the world, wild life scenes and other exotic imagery from japanese silent films to the turkish shadow theater to which the title of this piece makes homage. Slowed down, carefully crafted tinted and completely silent, this work stands out as one of the most beautiful and moving of their works. Images will speak more clear than my words ever will, do not miss this masterpiece of found footage.Read More »

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