MY ARMENIAN PHANTOMS
Competition
Tamara Stepanyan interweaves her memories of her late father, legendary Armenian actor Vigen Stepanyan, with a reflection on the history of Armenian film. Her father died in 2020, unexpectedly, rendering her grief that much more intense, as she believed she still had a lot of time left for conversations with him. MY ARMENIAN PHANTOMS arose from this interrupted exchange. The memory of Vigen Stepanyan led her into dialogue with other "ghosts" – her grandparents, who worked in the film industry, and friends of her father, including actors and filmmakers. Employing film quotations from various eras, Stepanyan tells the story of Armenian cinema – from censorship, exile and Soviet propaganda to works of emancipation. In a personal, non-didactic examination of the subject, she shows what made these films so valuable from an artistic perspective and what significance they have today – while tracing a connecting line to her own place in the world of (Armenian) cinema.
Tamara Stepanyan interweaves her memories of her late father, legendary Armenian actor Vigen Stepanyan, with a reflection on the history of Armenian film. Her father died in 2020, unexpectedly, rendering her grief that much more intense, as she believed she still had a lot of time left for conversations with him. MY ARMENIAN PHANTOMS arose from this interrupted exchange. The memory of Vigen Stepanyan led her into dialogue with other "ghosts" – her grandparents, who worked in the film industry, and friends of her father, including actors and filmmakers. Employing film quotations from various eras, Stepanyan tells the story of Armenian cinema – from censorship, exile and Soviet propaganda to works of emancipation. In a personal, non-didactic examination of the subject, she shows what made these films so valuable from an artistic perspective and what significance they have today – while tracing a connecting line to her own place in the world of (Armenian) cinema.
