Garegin Zakoyan
Directing
Biography
Garegin Zakoyan (b. April 5, 1947) is an Armenian documentary filmmaker and film scholar. In 1990, he founded the Armenian National Cinematheque, which he headed until 1998. In 2015, he founded and became the director of Apricot Tree International Documentary Film Festival. In 2016, he co-founded and became the president of Filmadaran Film Culture Development NGO. Making his directing debut in 1990 with "MIGNOR", he has since made around 15 documentaries, including "Prison Art" (1998, co-directed by Gennadi Melkonyan), "Kajaran: Metamorphosis of Stone" (2001), "Patarag" (2005), "Ayrudzi" (2017), "Mon Reichshoffen" (2023) etc. Zakoyan has been active in publishing renowned filmmaker Sergei Parajanov's heritage. 2020 saw the second, revised publication of "Sergei Parajanov: Letters from Prison", while "Sergei Parajanov: INTERMEZZO" was published in 2021 (both in Russian), comprising not only the script of Parajanov's unmade film, but also his illustrations and many archival materials surrounding its history. Zakoyan is the author of 2 monographies (in Russian): "Armenian Silent Cinema" (1977) and "Language and Cinema" (1989). He also published the photo-album "My Yerevan" (2019, in Armenian, Russian, English and French) and the extensive archival work "Armenian Cinema. Materials and Documents: 1909-1936" (2023, in Russian and Armenian).
Known For
A photographer and his wife travel across Armenia photographing churches for a calendar project. Travelling with them is a local man acting as their driver and guide. As the project nears completion, the distance between husband and wife grows.
Calendar
The members of the Ayrudzi troupe travel across various villages of Armenia on horseback and put on folk song and dance concerts and shadow theatre performances for the locals.
Ayrudzi
The film is a cinematic interpretation of the travel book “Armenia” by Russian poet Andrei Bely.
Andrei Bely: Armenia
Humans transform the world. In a stone mine, huge majestic rocks are blasted into pieces and after passing through the stone processing line, they gradually transform into pebbles.
Kajaran: Metamorphosis of Stone
An enthralling and thorough documentation of the traditional Armenian church liturgy.
Patarag. Armenian Lithurgy
This documentary, which features Sergei Parajanov’s heartbreaking letters from prison, explores creativity among inmates and the art born in conditions designed to destroy all traces of selfhood.
Prison Art
Showing Sergei Parajanov at the end of his life, the film depicts the suffering of a genius against the backdrop of general anxiety and carelessness.
MIGNOR
Filmed entirely from a single viewpoint during the closing ceremony of the 2023 Apricot Tree IDFF, Debet is an experimental observational documentary that forces the audience to pay attention to the smallest gestures and seemingly insignificant details of human behavior, creating a whole array of fascinating portraits.
Debet
By showing the performances of the Ayrudzi troupe in Armenia, the film acquaints the audience with one of the most interesting phenomena of national culture – shadow theatre.
Shadow Theater
The film is about a woman’s prison and shows how creativity transforms people and gives them strength.
God, Give Us Freedom
The film is a cinematic love-letter to Reichshoffen, a small, modest town in Alsace, and its residents.