Shushanik Mirzakhanyan Changed the Way the National Cinema Center of Armenia Worked

Mirzakhanyan said, “This too was a great achievement for us. It was screened in over 50 cities and countries and had great success in around 20 festivals. What is important is that by showing the film, the Genocide is also spoken about and the most influential journalists and newspapers write about the Genocide again. So through film we were able to revive this topic and make the whole world listen about this frightful calamity.”

The Armenian state benefited from its participation in Eurimages, the cultural support fund of the Council of Europe, which provided funding for “Aurora’s Sunrise” and “Should the Wind Drop,” as well as “Luka,” written and directed by Jessica Woodworth, Mirzakhanyan said. (This film, supported by organizations from five different countries, including Armenia, has among its main performers Armenian actor Samvel Tadevossian.)

Mirzakhanyan said that NCCA did not support the makers of comedies, who generally do not apply for aid but find sponsors privately and earn money. Instead, NCCA supported feature films, art and documentary films, short films and various other types of genres. It invited film experts from different countries of the world, who can participate online in the pitches and examinations of films, especially Armenian diasporans who help in the advancement of Armenian film. She said NCCA placed great emphasis on supporting young Armenian filmmakers through financing.

If there is any profit from a film NCCA invested in, the producers were obliged to return the money up to but not greater than what NCCA originally invested, Mirzakhanyan said, so that the money could be used to finance another film. However, few were able to return the entire sum, she noted.

The effect of the change of Armenia’s government in 2018, called by some the Velvet Revolution, was positive for the NCCA, Mirzakhanyan said, though she emphasized that she initiated the changes in NCCA prior to this. The new regime provided financing for the renovation of the NCCA’s office space. For many years, this space was rented out, while other property was rented by NCCA for its own use. She said this was absurd, so she was able to get the state to support this. Also, for the last two years, the budget provided by the state had been increased a lot, she said, especially for Armenian film restoration.

Film Restoration

Aside from promoting the creation of new films, NCCA restored a number of films that are important parts of the country’s film heritage. Working with specialists of European countries, Mirzakhanyan said, “We learn things through this cooperation, and thanks to this, we can do a higher quality production.”

In 2018, NCCA, working with colleagues in Poland and France, digitized and restored Sergei Parajanov’s short documentary film “Hakob Hovnatanyan,” originally made in 1967 prior to the director’s famous “Color of Pomegranates,” along with two other of his shorts. Mirzakhanyan said that the Armenian General Benevolent Union in New York aided in this greatly. Three 35mm 4K film copies were prepared. In 2019, one was given to the Pompidou Center in Paris, which was the first Armenian film given to that important museum, and one in 2020 to New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), in another first.

Aside from helping promote the classics of Armenian film, Mirzakhanyan explained that such gifts were made for the sake of preservation. She said that in case a copy of the film in one place over the years is damaged, another copy hopefully will remain intact and preserved.

In 2022, NCCA restored Frunze Dovlatyan’s 1966 feature film “Hello, It’s Me,” which was selected in competition at the Cannes Festival that year, and presented again by Armenia in the framework of the centennial of Armenian film at Cannes in 2023 as a classic. Mirzakhanyan said, “We were able to present it as one of the best films of the world. This is also an important work of the Cinema Center — we restore legacy films.”

MK2 Films, the global French film distribution association, signed an agreement of cooperation and said that they found a pearl this year in Cannes. Mirzakhanyan said, “This was very moving for us.”

In the fall 2023, MoMA screened Hamo Beknazaryan’s 1928 film “Khaspush” after NCCA sent a restored 35 mm 4k version, while in January 2024, two more restored Beknazaryan films, the 1928 “House on the Volcano,” and the 1930 “Land of Nayiri,” were presented to MoMA, which screened them too. Mirzakhanyan said, “For about 3 years back-to-back we had such close collaboration with such an important international platform as MoMA, and we have had a presentation nearly every year.” There is a preliminary agreement that next year too there will be a presentation there.

Mirzakhanyan said that NCCA was also working actively with La Cinémathèque française of Paris, where for three years in a row, Armenian films were shown. This year, she said, NCCA planned to show something by Parajanov because of his anniversary, which is part of the UNESCO list of anniversaries for events, and jointly restore another film.

As part of the centennial celebrations, in early April, Parajanov’s “Color of Pomegranates” was screened along with scenes unused in the film at UNESCO headquarters. In Soviet times, such scenes, either doubles or pieces the director chose not to use, normally were discarded, but the workers at HayFilm understood their value and preserved them anyway, Mirzakhanyan said.

The film fragments had been completely restored and digitalized in 2018 by NCCA with the Polish Fixafilm association together with restoration curator Daniel Bird, and they were shown in the form of an installation, on 24 special table monitors of different sizes on which they played continually on a loop.

The first showing of the installation, called the Temple of Cinema, was at the 48^th International Film Festival of Rotterdam, Netherlands, in 2019, and then in Yerevan the same year at the Ararat Film House. Financial assistance from the Armenian Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports allowed the creation of portable table monitors, the feet of which fold, and it was this version that was set up at UNESCO. Though this UNESCO showing was important for Armenia, Mirzakhanyan at the same time noted that the hall was not ideal for the installation. For future showings, she said, “As it was called the Temple of Cinema, it should rather be in a place like a church, airy, where Sayat Nova is heard and there is the smell of incense. That would create a totally different aura.”

NCCA did not possess the equipment necessary for scanning films, but the Armenian state television company did, so sometimes NCCA collaborated with it, Mirzakhanyan said. There were only a few restoration experts in Armenia, she added, so NCCA first would scan films in Armenia and then send out the digital files for restoration. Many Armenian films are held in Moscow by the Gosfilmofond [the Russian State Film Archive] as a result of Soviet policies, though NCCA retained their copyrights as the legal successor to HayFilm, so NCCA paid for scans of these films as the first stage in their restoration.

Mirzakhanyan added that subtitling was added to films when they were digitalized in languages like English, French or other major European languages. A new project was started last year, Mirzakhanyan said, with students from the Brusov State University of Languages and Social Sciences, as well as with students from other universities. They were taught how to prepare the subtitles, and they did this in French for the Armenian film “We Are Our Mountains” by Henrik Malyan. The subtitling of other films was planned, she said, which gets new viewers for Armenian films, gets students interested in Armenian cinema, and simultaneously advances the students’ abilities in various languages.

NCCA applied to the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports to create a laboratory which would be called, on the model of the Matenadaran (the Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts), the Kinodaran, or repository of films, where both preservation and restoration would take place. Right now, Mirzakhanyan said, films are being preserved in Armenia but not in good technical conditions with climate control and other factors. The set-ups are old, which is why such a step must be taken. Film, if properly taken care of, is a long-lasting format, unlike digital ones, which also are changed frequently, she noted.

Where Can You View Armenian Films?

NCCA has its own YouTube site (http://www.youtube.com/@HayFilm_Official) where there are a variety of digitalized videos of Armenian films, though nearly all without captions or subtitles and many are not restored. There are some 88,000 subscribers. These include very old films as well as some from the 2000s, but not the newest films nor many of the recently fully restored and captioned ones.

Everything produced by HayFilm belongs to NCCA (and now its successor foundation). NCCA/Cinema Foundation of Armenia has the rights also to screen the contemporary films which receive state financing, but this is only with the agreement of the producer, so that authorial rights are preserved. Mirzakhanyan gave the example of the films shown in Boston in collaboration with Amaras, for which NCCA had previously realized written agreements with the producers to allow them to be brought to the US and screened.

Contemporary films as well as those classics which have been newly restored and captioned were presented through professional platforms such as through museums and cinematheques. This provided these films almost automatically with a greater valuation. “It is as if we place a label on them and we obtain a certain level,” Mirzakhanyan said. She stressed that NCCA was always ready for cooperation with institutions in many different countries.

Last year, 2023, was the 100^th anniversary of the establishment of Armenian film production, and NCCA tried to show Armenian films everywhere, she said — in festivals, in private cinemas, and various other platforms. Around 100 films were shown for free.

In Armenia, there are very few remaining true movie houses. In Yerevan, Mirzakhanyan said, there is only one left, Kino Moscow, and the rest are in malls, as the culture of going to movie houses has declined compared to the Soviet era. This is a problem for movie producers, who want to distribute their films and of course make some money too. Another problem, she added, is that Armenian producers do not have the financial means to properly advertise their films. They can use social media, but ads are very expensive.

Now there is a movement to recreate movie houses, and NCCA established ties with them in cities. Mirzakhanyan said that in the villages, NCCA brought mobile screens to show films outdoors in the summer.

During the Soviet era and even afterwards, Mirzakhanyan remarked, “For many years, we did not present our Armenian films. It only has begun now. Films were shown in different festivals and won successes but not with a planned program of Armenian film, just the works of individual film directors. It is remembered more, it becomes more permanent and global, when you present Armenian cinema – Malyan, Dovlatyan, Peleshian, Parajanov, and various others, you show the breadth to film specialists and directors…It is never too late to present our history and legacy. This is our chronicle through film.”

As far as Armenian filmmaking itself, Mirzakhanyan said, “It seems to me that there was a different style in the Soviet years. I think now a new style or nature of Armenian film is being created, because there are new youth and new thinking. I cannot say that everyone is talented and everyone’s films are great. This cannot be, but I think that the more possibilities we give to create, from that quantity, we can find and choose certain pearls and give those directors a greater possibility of growing more. I believe we are in a stage where we have cultivated the soil, planted the sprouts, and now wait for the fruits.”